


If I Disappear, Will You Look For Me?

by autisticblueteam



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Autistic Agent Connecticut (Red vs. Blue), Autistic Character(s), Canon Compliant in Spirit, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Canonical Unhappy Ending, Communication Failure, Developing Relationship, Double Agents, F/F, Gen, Hacking, Halo Lore, Identity Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character Death, Minor The Meta | Agent Maine/Agent Washington, Missing Scenes, Missions, Missions Gone Wrong, Non-binary Agent Connecticut, Tragedy, Trans Agent South Dakota (Red vs. Blue), Trans Characters, Trust Issues, non-binary characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 213,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticblueteam/pseuds/autisticblueteam
Summary: Project Freelancer was supposed to be a lot of things. A source of innovation in the field of AI science. An elite team of super soldiers. A magic bullet to end the war. For some, it was even supposed to be a second chance to make a difference.Connie signed up for that second chance, but CT was the one that took it.This is the story of Project Freelancer, told from the perspective of the agent that sent it crashing and burning into the ground.[Updates Weekly]
Relationships: Agent Connecticut & Agent Washington (Red vs. Blue), Agent Connecticut & Insurrectionist Leader (Red vs. Blue), Agent Connecticut & Original Character(s), Agent Connecticut/Agent South Dakota (Red vs. Blue), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 32
Collections: RvB Fill in the Blanks, RvB hidden gems





	1. Project Freelancer audio log 01801C-M, 0341

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been my baby for the past year or so, now it's finally done and ready to begin posting! Thanks to texelations for acting as a Beta reader, any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> [Cover Art for the Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/bd45ce055a869b962109e60895a4f7e6/90915790bf4f885c-a2/s640x960/1878c0587a6abccdd923dae6f08f5c6ed1ecc70f.png)

_Project Freelancer audio log 01801C-M, 0212. Selection interview with Specialist Constance Diaz, prior to designation as Agent Connecticut._

(Door slides open.)

COUNSELOR: Specialist Diaz. Welcome. I’m glad that you could join us.

(Sound of cuffs detaching. A beep.)

DIAZ: Us?

COUNSELOR: My… associate, will be observing our conversation from the adjoining room. I hope that does not make you uncomfortable.

(Chair scrapes.)

DIAZ: No, that’s fine. At least you had the decency to tell me. (pause) You’re… the Counselor, right? Not Counselor Jones, or something, just ‘the Counselor’?

COUNSELOR: That is correct.

DIAZ: Huh. Alright. I’d introduce myself, but that seems pretty pointless when you have my entire life laid out on that screen in front of you. You must know everything about me.

(Sound of the COUNSELOR tapping the screen.)

COUNSELOR: I am curious about something. You are noted as a flight risk in your file. Why, then, do they not leave you cuffed? I am sure that I would be unable to stop you, should you decide to make for the door.

(Sound of metal being tapped by a fingernail.)

DIAZ: If I do something I shouldn’t, they can just stun me with this thing. 50,000 volts. I wouldn’t make it more than a step before I was on the floor. Don’t worry, Counselor, they have ways of dealing with ‘flight risks’.

COUNSELOR: Very well. Let’s get started, shall we?

(The table creaks.)

DIAZ: Sure. Go ahead.

COUNSELOR: Let’s start at the beginning. You, Specialist Diaz, are being held here under 10 counts of failure to obey a lawful order or regulation, including bypassing security measures to gain unauthorized access to secure UNSC servers and the subsequent unauthorized distribution of protected data. Am I correct?

DIAZ: You know you are. Keep going. I know you have the details there.

COUNSELOR: Very well. These charges were all brought in relation to the recent distribution of a number of secure UNSC documents relating to _Lockson Industries_ , who were responsible for the supply of military equipment to the colony of Resol. Those documents revealed that _Lockson_ had been supplying the soldiers there with… poor quality, armour and weaponry.

DIAZ: Poor quality is one way to describe it. So is dangerously prone to _failing in the middle of a firefight._ Do you know how many of those guns jammed? Or how many sets of armour damn near _fell apart_?

COUNSELOR: I have not been granted access to those records, however, from your tone I can assume it was—

DIAZ: (interrupting) _Too many_ , that’s what it was. If you looked at our casualty rates you’d think we were engaging the Covenant, not a band of poorly-stocked Innies who could barely shoot their way out of a wet paper bag!

COUNSELOR: I take it that you do not, in any way, deny these allegations?

DIAZ: No. I don’t. I did everything they say I did. Though the charge of aiding the enemy was a bit of a stretch. I’m glad they dropped _that_.

COUNSELOR: I see.

(Writing.)

(DIAZ taps the metal stunner again.)

DIAZ: Notepad and pen. Huh. You’re a little bit old school, aren’t you?

(Silence.)

COUNSELOR: Thank you for being… honest, with me, Diaz. Cooperation makes things go much smoother than unnecessary combativeness.

DIAZ: I have no reason not to be. I’m not ashamed of what I did. My company was in danger of being wiped out by faulty equipment before the Innies even had a chance to finish us off, all because _Lockson_ figured that just because we weren’t on the front lines of the war, they could cut costs on our gear.

COUNSELOR: I see that you feel very strongly about this subject.

DIAZ: Are you kidding me? Of _course_ I do. Am I supposed to _not_ feel strongly about my squadmates dying, or my being in jail because I tried to stop that?

COUNSELOR: I did not mean to imply that to feel strongly was a negative trait, Diaz.

DIAZ: Your tone is hard to read. Has anyone ever told you that?

(Writing.)

COUNSELOR: Your skill level is quite remarkable. Gaining access to secure UNSC servers is not so easily done.

DIAZ: No, it isn’t. I worked my way up to it. I had a lot of practice.

(Fingers tap against a screen.)

COUNSELOR: Yes, I can certainly see that. You have a… _history_ , of similar acts, do you not?

DIAZ: I do. Though technically, those charges were all expunged when I turned 18 and very few of them stuck. Besides, I don’t think that leaking emails about bribes for better test results or taking over the city’s central screen to show a list of known scammers in the markets are on _quite_ the same level as leaking UNSC files. Unless you’re someone who thinks there’s no sliding scale to morality, Counselor.

COUNSELOR: Indeed. They are, however, part of a pattern of behaviour.

(DIAZ taps the stunner, again.)

DIAZ: Sure is. I already told you, I’m not ashamed of it. I did the right thing. Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little to do that.

COUNSELOR: Indeed.

(Writing.)

DIAZ: Is that _really_ why I’m in another interrogation? Or— is this a _psych eval_?

COUNSELOR: This is not an interrogation, Diaz.

DIAZ: Then what _is_ it, exactly?

COUNSELOR: An interview. My associate—

DIAZ: (interrupting) An interview? For _what?_

COUNSELOR: —if I may speak.

DIAZ: (sighing) Sorry.

COUNSELOR: My associate and I are at the head of a new organisation, authorised by the UNSC to spearhead the testing of experimental technology that we believe will help us to win this war. This project is highly classified, and we must be… selective, in who we admit. You appeared on our radar shortly following the filing of charges against you.

DIAZ: You looking for a hacker?

COUNSELOR: We are looking for an… intelligence specialist. Your skillset is well suited to our organisation’s needs.

DIAZ: Experimental technology… this is special operations stuff, isn’t it? You don’t have to answer that. I know you probably couldn’t, anyway.

(A quiet chuckle.)

COUNSELOR: Project Freelancer is a… _unique_ organisation, Diaz. We will be working with a variety of new, untested and top-secret technology provided only for our operations. Therefore, I’m sure it comes as no surprise that we require only the best of the best. Minds such as yours, with _skills_ such as yours, are of paramount importance. It would be a shame, to see such a mind wasted.

(Silence.)

DIAZ: What… kind of technology?

COUNSELOR: Strictly speaking, that’s classified information.

(DIAZ groans.)

DIAZ: Of course.

COUNSELOR: _However,_ I have been given permission to show you a small… sampling, of what we will be working with.

(Sound of someone knocking the edge of the table.)

(Sound of something being set down.)

DIAZ: Is that armour?

COUNSELOR: It is.

DIAZ: Powered?

COUNSELOR: And fully capable of supporting a number of… innovative, pieces of hardware and software alike. For you, a software suite tailored to your exact specifications can be created to facilitate your skillset, for example.

DIAZ: Wow. That’s more than I expected to get out of you, actually.

COUNSELOR: We hope to be as… _transparent_ , as possible, with potential recruits, such as yourself.

DIAZ: Transparent, huh? (DIAZ taps her fingers against the table) You think this will help end the war?

COUNSELOR: That is what we hope to achieve, yes.

DIAZ: And if I agree to join this… ‘Project Freelancer’, you’ll somehow get me off these charges? You have _that_ much pull?

COUNSELOR: We have made… arrangements, to have your charges dropped should you agree to sign on to the Project. There are certain stipulations, which are laid out in the contract which would confirm your recruitment.

(Papers rustle.)

COUNSELOR: However, once you have made your decision, it will take no more than a few days to secure your release to one of our representatives, who will accompany you on a flight to our centre of operations.

(Silence. DIAZ is reading.)

DIAZ: (papers rustling, indistinct) …no outside contact… (indistinct) …services… (indistinct) Can I take this contract with me to read over in full?

COUNSELOR: Of course.

DIAZ: Alright… how much time do I have to decide?

COUNSELOR: Would twelve hours be sufficient?

DIAZ: I think so.

COUNSELOR: Very well. Then we shall reconvene in twelve hours; or less, should you decide you are satisfied sooner.

DIAZ: Will I be given time to say goodbye to my family before your ‘representative’ retrieves me? My moms live on-world. They know where I am.

COUNSELOR: That may be arranged. You do, however, understand that you can tell them nothing?

DIAZ: All they have to know is that I’m going away.

COUNSELOR: Very well. I will discuss such an arrangement with the local administration.

DIAZ: Thank you. I suppose I better return to my cell and read this contract, then.

(A tone summons the guard. A door slides open.)

COUNSELOR: I trust that you will make the right decision, Specialist Diaz.

DIAZ: I’m sure I will, Counselor.

(Sound of cuffs closing. A beep.)

COUNSELOR: Make sure she has these papers. She will require no pen. The documentation can be signed when we return.

(Papers rustle. DIAZ is escorted from the room. The door closes.)

COUNSELOR: She will be a valuable asset to the Project; however, I would recommend that we be… mindful, in our dealings with her, Director.

(Silence.)

DIRECTOR CHURCH: (distorted by a speaker) We need only assure her of our intentions. We have nothing to hide, Counselor.

COUNSELOR: Yes, sir. You are, of course, correct.

[Audio ends.]


	2. The New Normal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise for the chapter lengths from here on out.
> 
> [Cover Art for the Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/425c27c553a5c93d703855a592e2a8b6/3238d211cc6faec5-0f/s640x960/8a49005aa0bdd858a0ddc52d68342c3c62403b49.png) by mercysewerpyro/artsilon.

Connie awoke to the shrill, repetitive beeping of her alarm.

“ _Ugggh_.”

Face scrunched into a wrinkled caricature, she fumbled around under her pillow for the band fastened around her wrist. Her fingers found the cool plastic and she pressed down, smoothing across the empty surface. Damn these things and their lack of buttons, how were you ever supposed to find the right control without looking at them when there were no buttons _?_

 _Finally_ , she heard the quiet trill of the switch activating in the back of her mind.

< _No Alarms Active. Next alarm is set for: 0800 hours._ >

No alarms—?

Right on cue, there was a drawn-out yawn and the shuffle of fabric against fabric.

Groaning, Connie dragged her pillow over her head. “Really, Wash? _Really?_ ”

Innocently as can be, her bunkmate replied only with, “What?” as the alarm continued to blare rudely in the background. When she heard the click of his footlocker’s clasps, she grabbed the pillow and threw it as hard as she could across the room.

“Don’t you ‘what’ at me, Washington! Alarm! Off!”

“Oh, shit, right.”

Finally, _mercifully_ , the beeping stopped.

Connie sighed and buried her face in the mattress. “ _Thank_ you. I don’t have to get up for another hour, Wash. C’mon.”

“Sorry, the internal alarms just really don’t work for me.” His footlocker snapped shut again, but not before he gave it an extra hard smack to get that pesky bent corner to seal properly. Like he did every morning. “You can go back to sleep. Though that might be hard without your pillow.”

“Mm. Gimme,” she said. Reaching out blindly, refusing to pull her face away from the bed, she was not granted her ex-weapon. “ _Waaash._ ”

“You can have it back once I’m out of the room and I know you’re not going to attack me anymore,” Wash said, patting the pillow.

Connie turned her head to glare at him, and then to pout, but no amount of puppy-dog eyes was enough to get through Wash’s defences this morning. He simply waved the pillow at her— _taunting_ her—and then threw it on his own bed, safe from her grabbing hands.

“You’re the worst bunkmate ever.”

“Of all time?”

“Mmhm.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m in the mess hall and they have your favourite breakfast bars that always run out before you get there.”

When his head popped back out of his shirt, he was greeted by a comically exaggerated scowl.

“Too far?”

“ _Treason_.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll leave you one in your locker as always,” he said, plopping down on top of her pillow to pull on his boots.

“You better. And get your butt off my pillow!” Before the words even finished leaving her mouth, Wash’s back-up alarm pierced the air. “And _turn that off!_ ”

Wash smacked the top of his laughably dated alarm clock and chuckled. “Sorry, sorry, forgot I had that one set.”

Huffing, she rolled over onto her back and splayed dramatically across her mattress. “You’re the _worst._ ”

“Would it make up for it if I got you _two_ bars this morning?”

Connie’s nose wrinkled in thought and she gave a very well-considered, “… _maybe._ ”

Tying the final double-knot in his laces, Wash hopped to his feet and retrieved her pillow from its confinement. Offering it to her, he grinned as she snatched it up and shoved it back into its rightful spot.

“See you at lunch?”

“Mmhm,” she mumbled, rolling back onto her front. Her face scrunched again as he ruffled the long side of her hair and she batted at him, following it up with a trusty flip of the bird as he laughed and walked away.

The door opened, then closed, with a quiet beep, and Connie was left in silence.

What time even was it? Fumbling with her comm. band again, the quiet voice that sounded like a slightly pitched-up F.I.L.S.S answered: < _The time is 0711. Your next alarm is set for: 0800._ >

“ _Uggggh._ ”

There was no point in going back to sleep now. By the time she’d properly dosed off again her alarm would trigger, and she’d have to go through waking up all over again.

If Wash didn’t get her that second bar, she could make no promise that he’d survive the day.

The threatening dramatism faded as she began to wake up properly, after the abrupt end to her unclear dreams and much-needed night’s sleep. After basking in her remaining moments of silence for a little while longer, she dug out her data-pad from her bedside—tapping the bird figurine that guarded it three times on the beak—and checked her schedule for the day.

<0900: _Training Floor (extended session)_. 1300-1400: _Break_. 1400-1900: _Intelligence Centre_.>

Right. It was her turn to be put through the wringer. That extra hour of sleep was missed more and more by the second.

With a groan, she dragged her hands down her face and herself from her bed. Her nightclothes were tossed, begrudgingly, in a heap at the foot of her mattress and the colour-coded official civvies of the Project donned in their place.

At 0900 hours, the sharp ring of her alarm sounded in the back of her mind before being quickly silenced. At least she had a little more time for breakfast, she supposed.

Predictably, the container holding her favourite breakfast bar—dark chocolate and almonds, with an added energy supplement—was empty, but she trusted Wash to have retrieved at least one, so she settled for the next best thing. She filled her tray with a glass of juice and what passed for a fried egg on toast, then found a seat with Montana and Illinois in one of the booths unofficially claimed for Beta Squad.

“Okay, but a bee would totally win if the whale had a bee sting allergy,” was the first thing she heard as her tray clunked down on the table.

She paused, knee on the bench, and squinted at Montana.

“ _What_ have I just walked in on?”

“Monty and I are debating,” Illinois said, interrupted momentarily by swallowing, “whether a giant bee or a whale would win in a fight.”

“I— that… raises a lot more questions than it gives answers,” she said, sliding into her seat.

“I’m telling you, the bee would win,” Monty continued, as if Connie hadn’t said a word. Their hands were jittering around like they were high on caffeine and Connie raised a brow at Illinois in a silent question.

Illinois chuckled, taking a sip of his coffee. “They just got back from a 24-hour surveillance mission with Gin,” he said, flicking his eyes towards their team lead who was filling up what looked to be a well-used cup of her own. Connie mouthed an exaggerated ‘ohhh’. “I don’t think they’re built for it.”

“Oh, I absolutely am not,” Montana confirmed with a sharp shake of their head.

Muffling a laugh in the rim of her glass, Connie patted them on the shoulder. “Pass out on the rec room couch if you have to. I’m sure Louisiana will cover for you.”

“ _If_ I can make it that far.”

“She’d probably carry you herself, Monty.”

“She’s done it before, in fact,” Illinois added. Monty squinted, but accepted it with a nod. “And by the way, I still think the whale would win. All it has to do is go under water until it can strike the bee with its tail and then it’s all over.”

“ _Bullshit._ ”

By the time Connie had finished her food and the dregs of the drink she dragged on for much too long, Monty had been joined on their side of the argument by Utah; Illinois had been joined by Beta’s resident twins, Hawaii and California; and Virginia had come over to and then quickly left the table out of an adamant refusal to let them drive her mad this early in the morning.

And by the time Connie had run out of excuses to stick around to see the result of the hilarity, Louisiana had arrived in the mess hall and had Monty thrown over her shoulder before Connie could even make it out of the door. They could still be heard arguing, all the way down the hall.

Her next stop was the central hub.

The screens that lined the top of the walls were crammed as full of information as ever, cycling through the most recent reports of glassed colonies, lost ships, and the occasional minor victory. It was the ship’s only consistent point of contact with the outside world and the only way anyone onboard had to check if their homes were still there to go back to, once this was all over. A couple of screens were dedicated to ship-based news such as mission clocks; changing squad assignments; which training rooms were inaccessible; and so on, but most of them were solely for the war.

The hub was rarely empty, but it was quiet that morning. Rhode Island was sat in the corner of the room, her gaze appearing unbroken behind the opaque visor, and Maine, all seven foot plus of them, stood at the back. Keeping out of the way.

“Hey,” Connie said, stepping up beside them. They looked down at her and gave a quiet grunt of acknowledgement, their attention turning quickly back to the screens. “Looking for anything specific, big guy?”

They shook their head. No. Nothing in particular, not like her.

Scanning past the now familiar segments—like the glassing of Skopje that had been up there for at least a month and the screen that was dedicated entirely to news of the SPARTAN program that had been there for at least five—she breathed a sigh of relief. Her fingernails stopped picking at the scar across her palm before she’d even registered they’d been doing it.

Nothing today.

Her comm. beeped at her. Fifteen-minute warning.

It took almost five of those minutes at a brisk pace to get to the locker room. Dodging the other agents milling around and getting ready for their missions, she was already kicking off her pants before she made it to her locker. She keyed in her code, opened it up, and tossed them unceremoniously in the bottom section as she snatched up one of the two breakfast bars on the middle shelf.

It was stuffed half-way into her mouth, and she was half-way through shimmying into her undersuit, when an armoured figure leaned their weight against the locker next to her with the distinct noise of metal on metal.

“Wow, mischief, you look like shit.”

Tilting her head back and taking a vicious bite of the bar on its way out, Connie greeted South with a deadpan stare. “Thanks. It’s a look I like to call ‘Wash woke me up an hour early’.”

South snickered. “ _Ouch_. You gonna get him back?”

“He got me two of the almond and chocolate bars, so I’ve decided to let him live for now.”

“Huh.” South snorted. Crossing her arms over her chest, she blew a stray strand of purple-tipped hair out of her face. It was brighter than the last time Connie had seen it. “You’re more merciful than I’d be, that’s for fuckin’ sure. I’d need at _least_ a week’s worth of desserts and a grovelling apology if some asshole disturbed my beauty sleep.”

“Like you need it,” Connie said. To pull on the last part of her suit, she returned the remains of the bar to its place between her teeth. Nimble fingers paired up the seals that ran down the front of the kevlar, covering up the light brown skin of her chest inch by inch.

South grinned at her.

“You heading out on assignment?” Connie asked once the seals were closed against her neck and her mouth was free again.

“Yep. Probably some Innie shit again. Fucking _yawn_ ,” South said, faking a yawn, only for it to turn into a real one. Connie muffled a giggle. “See? That boring.”

“South? You coming?” came another voice.

Rolling her eyes, South turned her head half-way and yelled back, “Yeah yeah, give me a fuckin’ minute, cockass! I’m sure Niner can wait thirty seconds for me to catch up!”

“I have—” Connie’s comm. band beeped and she flinched, “ _—exactly_ five minutes to get my armour on and make it down to the floor. So, I better get going too. Good luck out there.”

South flashed her the kind of confident smile that told her she didn’t need it, a smile that quickly disappeared beneath her helmet. With a mock salute, she jogged off to catch up with her team. “North you impatient _fuck—_ ”

For a moment Connie just sat there giggling behind the latest mouthful of her breakfast bar, until the sharp, piercing beep of her comm. rang out again and prodded her nerves an inch closer to the wrong side of alert. Her teeth caught her lip.

“Yeah yeah I get it, I’m going,” she said to no one, adjusting the band under her suit.

Four hours was a long solo session, even by Project Freelancer’s standards, but once she hit the floor she began to understand why it was on her schedule. There was something different about her HUD, but no attention was drawn to it by the Director who loomed in the viewing bay connected to the bridge, so she ignored it.

The first hour was nothing but the standard, performance-testing drills agents ran every other day or so—target practice, melee markers, the modular obstacle course that looped around the circular floor, and so on. After that, however, with her latest numbers recorded and the floor returned to its default state, her HUD flashed and highlighted a small collection of new features.

“ _As you can see, agent, the latest update has been pushed for your infiltration software. We will be testing it today for its responsiveness and quality. Familiarise yourself with the layout of the new functions and then we shall begin,_ ” the Director said, his thick southern drawl catching on the edges of intercom static.

First new update in a while. Which of the features they were working on did they want to try this time, she wondered.

“Yes sir! Give me five minutes and I’ll be up to speed.”

The new interface was… mostly intuitive, though personally she would have organised it a little differently. All of her basic programs were still there, ready to give her remote access to any nearby server, network, or connected lock with a simple flick of her eyes and the right know-how. Her storage folder of a variety of trojan horses, worms, and other handy bits of software had been moved to another corner, but she could get used to that, she supposed. Though _why_ Massachusetts felt the need to change _that_ , she wasn’t sure.

Where was the—?

Ah, underneath that. New toy.

It was labelled ‘TURNCOAT’ and a quick scan through its functions revealed it was some kind of advanced tracking system, for an isolated area, that enhanced her radar whilst being able to disguise her IFF signal as friendly on nearby enemy systems. There were two options, though one was currently greyed out: switch and mimic (disabled).

That could be useful. If it worked.

“Ready, sir!”

“ _Begin the test._ ”

Three standard training bots with foe signals were deployed onto the training floor as artificial walls rose to mimic an enemy facility. Her customary set-up. Connie ducked behind a wall and watched her radar, tracing the latest pattern of simplistic movements the bots made across the floor that she’d memorised last week—it wasn’t cheating if she wasn’t being tested on her ability to avoid them.

She waited until one of them was alone, on the far side of the floor, then activated the ‘switch’ command.

Nothing happened, at first. A few seconds passed where the two dots stayed their respective colours with no sign of change, long enough to think it wasn’t working at all, but then the bot moved in such a way that it passed directly adjacent to her hiding spot and like _that_ , red and yellow switched.

Huh. It waited for a moment where the owners of the signals could believably have switched positions.

Cut it a bit close, though.

“Okay, I think I see a potential flaw, but we’ll have to run it a few more times to be sure.”

They ran it over and over for the next _three hours_. She expected as much. They ran through every configuration of bots she’d encountered on the ship so far and then some, testing repeatedly how the TURNCOAT software worked in a variety of situations. Through numerous tests, the same issues kept coming up: the software was _smart_ , but it thought it was smarter than the person running it and that meant it activated too quickly or too slowly.

Just as you thought you had its processes worked out, it would throw you for a loop and force you to take another variable into account when activating it.

Like that, it simply wasn’t functional for field use and she said as much, when the Director asked her opinion at the end of the session.

“It’s got a solid base code. It perfectly disguises your signal as the enemy’s and theirs as yours, but the user needs to have much more control over it for it to be useful in the field. It’s going to take a lot of patches and test runs to get it right, sir.”

The Director was inscrutable behind the reflective lenses of his glasses and the flat line of his lips, but Connie had learned quickly that you would _know_ if the Director was displeased with you. So, she stood straight at attention and tilted her head so it looked like she was meeting his eyes from behind the false golden ones of her visor, whilst instead following the alert of a returning team that scrolled across the bottom of the screen behind him.

“Very well, Agent Connecticut. You will deliver your feedback on the TURNCOAT software to Agent Massachusetts when you report to the Intelligence Centre later today. It will become another of your joint projects.”

Internally, Connie said: _Great! Another thing for us to disagree on!_

Externally, Connie said: “Yes, sir,” and, as soon as she was dismissed, muted her helmet and let out a long, throat-scraping groan.

After a quick shower and devouring half of her second bribe in one bite, she no longer felt like death warmed over. Four hours on the floor was rough, regardless of how much physical exertion the session actually involved. Wasting another ten minutes of the hour assigned for her lunch break was worth it to wash away some of the mental overstimulation under a stream of hot water and get a moment alone.

Still, it came with a price. By the time she got to the mess hall, everyone else assigned to the break slot had already stripped it bare.

“Hey, hey Connie!”

Wash waved at her from across the room and, the moment he realised he caught her attention, gestured at a tray stacked with salad and whatever they were passing off as meat today. Connie sighed and smiled, waving back and making her way over. Thank god.

He was surrounded on all sides by the pale blue armour of Idaho, Iowa and Ohio. Ohio’s candyfloss pink afro-puff bounced a little in time with her talkative hands and Iowa’s head was nodding rapidly as they chatted about something that, once she was close enough, sounded D&D related.

“—and and and, you— you summoning your pact weapon, to— to cut your bonds just like that? Amazing! I-I never woulda thought of that,” Iowa said, almost knocking over his glass of water whilst gesticulating wildly—Idaho caught it, thankfully.

“I mean, it wasn’t _that_ big of a deal, y’know? I mean— no, who am I kidding, that was _awesome_ , I can’t _believe_ those bad guys didn’t think to put some anti-magic field up or _something_ to stop things like that!” Ohio said, bouncing a little in her seat.

Idaho coughed, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, guess they uh— guess they overlooked that.”

“How do you guys even have the _time_ to run a D&D campaign?” Wash asked around a mouthful of re-hydrated mashed potato. Connie smacked him across the back of the skull as she passed by, taking her seat opposite him. “Hey!”

“You were talking with your mouth full again,” she said, and then popped a baby tomato into her mouth. After swallowing, she continued, “But he does have a point. How do you guys have time for something like that?”

“Oh, that’s easy, it’s because we’ve never _once_ been sent on an actual assignment!” Ohio said, her voice pitched up in a way that must have been an attempt to disguise the strain in it, but instead only amplified it. “Isn’t that great! Just— absolutely wonderful!”

“That… would certainly free up some time, I suppose,” Connie said. Glancing over at Wash, she found him stuffing his face fast enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if he choked and pointedly avoiding looking at the three Delta Squad agents. “Anyway… how did your morning sessions go?”

“I only blew up two cars today, so that’s an improvement!” Iowa said, twirling dried-out looking spaghetti around his fork.

“Vera beat her own personal best on the shooting range, too,” Idaho said, kicking Ohio under the table. Ohio kicked back sharply enough for her foot to nearly careen into Connie’s shin, only to jab into the bench instead. “That was pretty impressive. What about you? You were down on that floor before we went in and you were still going when we came out.”

The dull aches of those long hours throbbed a little more noticeably. Connie sighed. “New piece of software we’re testing. It’s brand new, a Freelancer original as far as I can tell, so there’s a lot of kinks to work out. I guess the Director wanted me to find as many of them as possible in one go, get it over with.”

Wash met her with a rare moment of eye contact as he deliberately swallowed his food, before he said, “What’s it do?”

“Switches your IFF reading with the enemy’s.” Reaching over, she snatched a spoonful of mash from his plate. “It’s a clever trick, it’s just not quite functional yet. Not really.”

He frowned, reached over went to his fork into a piece of thick meat. “Does that mean you have to—”

Behind him, there was the familiar commotion of a group of agents barging their way into the mess all at once. The returning team had finally made their way over from post-mission debriefing and South was leading the pack, walking backwards as she bickered with her brother about something or other. Her helmet was tucked under her arm and her hair was a mess, flyaway strands of pale blonde and bright purple that was _absolutely_ helmet hair, but didn’t really look out of place.

Apparently deeming the argument not worth continuing, she flipped North off and spun on her heel, striding over to the remains of the food bar.

“You’re staring at South again.”

Snapping back to reality, Connie stabbed the piece of meat and flinched at the scrape of metal against the plate. “I’m not _staring_ at anybody.”

“You absolutely are,” Wash said, confiscating her fork and popping the morsel into his mouth. Connie stole another spoonful of mash, just to keep things even. “You’re practically _drooling._ And I know it’s not over this shitty mess hall food.”

“Wash, I swear to god—”

“She’s coming over, by the way,” Idaho said matter-of-factly, pointing with his spoon. Ohio sat a little straighter.

Connie looked past Wash. He was right. South, now wielding an energy drink the same shade of blue as her eyes in one hand and a high-calorie snack bar in the other, was heading right for their back-corner table.

Wash gave Connie a look and she didn’t even have time to mimic it before South was standing beside her.

“Hey mischief. You made sure this asshole,” she bonked Wash on the head with her bottle, “is appropriately fuckin’ terrified yet, or you still letting him off?”

“Unfortunately, he made sure I actually had lunch to eat, so he’s bought himself an extended pass,” Connie said, nudging him under the table with her boot. Wash retaliated in turn. “You guys just got back?”

“Yep. Fucking boring, as expected. Caught ‘em by surprise and most of them didn’t even get to hit the trigger before,” she mimicked holding a rifle, “pop pop, down they fuckin’ went. Interfering with a munitions factory. Bunch of dickholes. Don’t know what they expected us to shoot the Covvies with if they had their way.”

Popping the lid off her bottle, she took a swig. Connie followed the line of her throat, until she became _acutely_ aware of the eyes on her and she jammed her foot a little harder into Wash’s leg. Wash bit his lip.

“That’s a shame. I was hoping it would be something more connected to that hint of a network we’ve found. We’ve been at a dead end on that for a while now,” she said, doing her best not to give Wash any more ammunition.

Unfortunately, South seemed to have other ideas. “Nope, sorry mischief, got no cool, case-breaking shit like that to share today. Just standard fuckin’ fare. But when we get something, you’ll be first to fuckin’ know,” she said, giving her another of those confident grins. “Okay, I gotta grab as much more shit as I can before those fuckfaces take the last of it because _fuck_ , I am _starving._ Don’t let the rookie—”

“Why am _I_ the rookie?”

“—because you were the one of last ones to arrive on the ship, rookie, keep up. Anyway, don’t let the rookie fuck your morning over again.” Knocking Wash once more in the back of the head for good measure, South turned and walked away as suddenly as she’d arrived.

There was a moment of silence as she walked out of earshot, before Wash said, “Case in point.”

Connie refused to look at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You two have been flirting ever since you did that simulation mission against each other!” Wash’s voice rose an octave or ten in that way it did when he was _really_ incensed about something. Why, of all things, he was so worked up over _this_ , Connie didn’t know.

“We have _not_ ,” Connie said, tossing one of her remaining baby tomatoes at him.

He caught it in his mouth, chewed it, and continued. “Yes you have! What do you think _that_ was if it wasn’t flirting?”

“A _conversation._ That’s just how South talks to people, Wash.”

“Connie, I swear to god. She calls you _mischief._ ”

He was staring at her pointedly. She ignored him, just as pointedly.

“Agent South is _really_ hot, Connie,” Ohio added, oh so helpfully. “I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you had a crush on her.”

Iowa, also _oh_ so helpfully, piped up with, “5 reasons Connie’s in love with South. Go.”

“Her muscles.”

“One.”

“Her hair.”

“Two.”

“Her—”

“We are _not_ having this conversation right now,” Connie said, scanning the room for something, _anything_ , to redirect the conversation towards. One thing caught her eye: Georgia, bright green and unmistakably smug, grandstanding about something or other. “Have you guys seen the way Georgia’s been acting since they got moved up a squad?”

Wash gave her that same look he had given here mere minutes ago, but he wilfully rose to the bait. “Oh yeah, they’ve been in Alpha for like… two days, and they’re already acting like they’re number one.”

“Even the _actual_ number one doesn’t act like that,” Idaho said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Wash said, “that’s insulting to Agent Carolina.”

From there, the conversation quickly turned towards the antics of other agents and Connie relaxed as, finally, she was able to finish eating in relative peace. At least, until her band beeped with a fifteen-minute warning.

Connie _groaned_. “Oh, great.”

“What? What’s your next slot?” Wash said, finishing off the last of his drink.

“Intelligence Centre. With _Mass._ ”

“Oh, right! That was what I was going to ask before we got… interrupted,” he glanced towards South, sat across the room at a table with Georgia, North and Oregon. “You have to tell Mass about the flaws in the new software, don’t you?”

“Yes! And it’s going to end in another argument. It _always_ does,” Connie said. Covering her face with her hands, she groaned again. Catching the sound of a muffled chuckle across from her, she blindly kicked out at Wash’s shins. “Don’t laugh at my suffering, Washington.”

“H— How long’s the slot?” Iowa said.

“Five. Hours.”

“Oooo that’s not good. That’s _alllll_ kindsa not good.”

Her hands dragged down her face and she sighed. “Believe me, Iowa, I know.”

“That there,” Ohio said, pointing at Iowa with her fork, “that there is the seal of death. Even Iowa thinks you’re fucked, Connie.”

“You guys are so, so helpful,” Connie said, her voice dry.

“Thanks, we try,” Wash said, matching her exactly.

Connie kicked him in the shin once more. Just for good measure.

When Connie arrived at the Intelligence Centre, Massachusetts was already in zir seat at the terminals.

“You’re late,” ze said, without so much as turning zir chair. Ze spat out the hair-tie pinched between zir teeth and threw zir dark hair up into a ponytail at the base of zir skull. There was a healing cut stretching across the bridge of zir arched nose, a flash of discolouration in their warm brown skin.

“By two minutes,” Connie said, dropping into her seat and typing in her password without looking at the screen. Her band had finally stopped beeping once she stepped over the threshold. “I was in the mess hall. You know how far that is from here.”

Ze sucked in the corner of zir lips, before apparently deciding to concede that point. “So, we’re meant to be working on TURNCOAT. You tried it, this morning?”

“I did.”

Massachusetts flicked a finger across zir screen and a file appeared on Connie’s.

“There’s the code. No, we are _not_ going to reorganise it,” ze said. Connie’s mouth snapped shut. “If I have to put up with the way you build your code when updating your hacking tools—”

“Technically, they’re infiltration tools.”

“—then you can put up with mine when we’re working on an actual _program,_ ” ze finished, already highlighting something amongst the lines of code. “The Director said you had observations for me.”

“First of all, the tools I use _are_ programs, they’re just designed for infiltration—” (“Hacking.”) “—so you don’t like them. But yes, yes I do.” Picking at the edge of the scar across her hand, she tilted her head at zir. “Do you want the good first, or the bad first?”

“Bad.”

“It thinks it knows better than the person using it.” Much like its creator. “You gave the algorithms too much freedom to overrule the manual activation.”

Mass narrowed zir eyes. “It needs to be adaptable.”

“Obviously, but it’s adapting too drastically. At the very least there needs to be an override you can select when you activate it.”

“Fine. That’s a compromise I’m willing to make,” Mass said. “I’m still working on tightening up the algorithms _anyway_ , Connecticut, it was only an alpha release.”

“Really?” Her brow furrowed, until Mass nodded towards her screen where a freshly highlighted section was now displayed. ‘Mimic’. Right, the missing feature. “Huh. Well… alright. I have to give you that it was remarkably stable for an incomplete release.”

“Thank you,” ze said, sharp but polite. “This is a rather ambitious project. It does, however unfortunately, require your skillset to work. Especially in the case of the mimicking side of things. It’s one thing to switch the place of two existing signals, it’s another to have it create a convincing replacement signal like _that_ ,” ze snapped zir fingers.

“It certainly is…” Connie tapped her fingers against the terminal in rhythmic groups of three, filling the brief silence with the dull noise of her nails against metal. “I’m happy to take a crack at a rough idea of how that’d work, while you adjust those algorithms?”

“Sounds like a decent enough use of our time. You know what you’re doing when it comes to that, at least,” Mass said, which was about as close to a compliment as Connie expected to get from zir. Though, she supposed, ze didn’t expect much better off her. “You _do_ know how to structure code my way, right?”

“Maybe. If I _have_ to.”

“You do.”

“Then yes. I can mimic your impossible to read coding structure.”

Massachusetts didn’t rise to the bait, this time.

“Are you still doing work over there?”

It was 2100 hours. Dinner had come and gone with minimal fanfare, with most of Alpha Squad dragged into a late-night meeting with the Director about something or other and the remaining majority of the agents flittering in and out of the mess at their own pace.

The Beta bench was, once again, home to a vibrant discussion. Montana had apparently been successfully wrangled onto a rec room couch and was now more than awake enough to continue the earlier argument. Wash had joined the bee side, in the end.

Connie was still undecided.

“Yes,” she said, without looking away from her screen. Rolling a string of beads between her hands, she squinted at the latest section of her code. She’d managed to build a rough base for an algorithm that could extrapolate the necessary data from a nearby signal to create a unique, but believable, mask for one’s own. She’d put it down long enough to eat and vent about the no less than _four_ separate arguments she and Mass had devolved into, but the itch to keep working was under her skin. “I just want to get this to a point it can be tested.”

Wash lay his data-pad down on his chest and raised a brow. “Do I have to come over there and close that—whoa!” Connie pulled out one of the knives in the holster still wrapped around her lower leg and he threw up his hands in a mock defensive block. “Point received, loud and clear.”

Connie giggled, winking over at him as she slipped it back into place.

“I have to clean my knives soon, anyway, so I’ll stop then,” she said, continuing to type.

Wash shook his head at her, popping his cat-shaped chew into his mouth and returning to the first aid field manual he was reading. For a while, they returned to the companionable silence that had dominated the room for the past hour or so, disturbed only by Wash’s quiet mumbling to himself as he memorised something or other and the faint clicking of Connie’s beads and keys.

At least, until the sharp, synchronised beep rang out from both of their comm. bands.

Equally in sync, they both flinched.

“God, I _hate_ that,” Wash said. Dragging himself backwards, up into a slightly more elevated position, he tapped his screen.

“I’m going to _assume_ that’s on the TEAMCOM and let you read it out so I don’t have to stop.”

Wash gave her a look so targeted she could feel it. “You’re a workaholic, you know that?”

“Yep,” she said, lips popping on the ‘p’ sound.

“…can’t argue with that, okay, uhhhh— yeah, it’s from Gin.” There was a pause, filled only by that familiar mumbling. “Oh, cool. Looks like they’re going to be handing out some of our squad’s armour enhancement units this week.”

Connie perked up, sitting back from her PC and pulling up her own copy of the message. There it was, subject line _Beta Squad Armour Enhancements_. “About time. Most members of Alpha have had theirs for weeks now, haven’t they?”

“Well, yeah, but they’re also _Alpha._ I’m surprised we’re getting them this _early_ ,” Wash said, scanning over the message one more time before setting his pad down. “I wonder what we’re going to get given. Some of the stuff Alpha has is real advanced looking. Have you seen those shields the Dakotas have? I swear I’ve seen those before.”

“In the war?”

“Yeah, during a fight with my last platoon, before, you know—” he gestured vaguely and Connie nodded; she’d seen his file, the day before they were introduced to each other, “—and I _definitely_ remember seeing a shield like that. Hard-light, it looks like. Crazy stuff.”

“I’d expect something equally crazy, then. That seems to be exactly what this place is about,” Connie said. Looking at the time, she sighed, closed her PC and returned it to its spot beneath her bed. In its place, she laid out her knives and began the nightly ritual of cleaning them. They hadn’t been used today, so it wouldn’t take long. “Make a wild guess. What do you think we’re going to get?”

“Oh man.” Wash sat up, folding his legs and holding his ankles as he rocked from side to side. “How far-fetched do you think teleportation is?”

“ _Very_ ,” Connie giggled. The cool, smooth surface of the blade beneath her fingers and the cloth she used almost seemed to soothe some of the remaining aches of the day. Her fingers ran back and forth along it a few more times than needed before she moved onto the next knife in the pile. “Maybe not quite that crazy.”

“Is it really that crazy when we have slipspace travel?”

Connie raised a brow, setting another knife back in its rightful place. “Slipspace travel requires gigantic engines and an AI to safely plot the course, I think that’s a bit beyond the capabilities of a single suit of power armour.”

There was a beat, before Wash said, “Okay, I’ll give you that.”

“Going by what the upper squad already has…” she tapped the dull side of her blade against the palm of her hand, “personally, I’d put money on something else that enhances certain physical capabilities.”

“Now what you’ve done there is go the completely _opposite_ direction on the crazy scale. All the way to the other side. Like when someone gets off the other end of the seesaw.”

“Alright, smartass,” she said, setting down her knife and folding her arms, “what’s your middle-of-the-crazy-road answer?”

His brow furrowed with thought and he popped his chew back into his mouth. When he spoke again, he didn’t drop it. “Well, they already have something Covvie-looking, so… maybe that invisibility thing they have. Haven’t seen the Alphas with that yet.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have.”

Wash squinted at her. A full ten seconds passed before—

“Oh fuck you.”

Connie erupted into giggles so strong her entire body shook, doubling over as Wash tried, and failed, to keep a straight face.

Three days later, eight agents out of the fifteen-person roster of Beta Squad were registered for a group training session between 0900 and 1700 hours.

It wasn’t hard to guess what it was for and a quick dip into the scheduling database revealed the notes attached to command’s side of things: Beta Squad Armour Enhancements, Wave One. Wash and Connie had both made the cut.

Everyone was relieved to find that they were not expected to stay for the entire _eight hour_ slot—there were several muttered curses of relief and Monty’s shoulders noticeably slumped with it, once the Director explained—though they were encouraged to stay and watch or act as test subjects for as long as possible. People slipped away for breaks when the less remarkable units were running, like the enhanced jump units utilised by the twins, Hawaii and California.

At least three people _returned_ when it was Nebraska’s turn to test out his enhanced personal shields, which presented the opportunity to unload an entire magazine into him without consequence. And if one of the training bullets got through and caught him in the ribs? Well, that was all a part of the exercise.

“You ready to give yours a go, Connie?” Virginia said, offering her a hand where she lay on the ground, knocked flat by a wave from Virginia’s stun blast unit. “Sounds like a fun one, going by the name.”

“Yeah, sure,” Connie replied casually, as if she hadn’t been waiting hours to finally try out this ‘holographic projection’. It certainly sounded more interesting than Wash’s EMP—single-use, without F.I.L.S.S., short range and currently unsuitable for use around other units, which they learned the hard way.

She grabbed the offered hand and tugged herself to her feet, popping up onto her tip toes as she pulled up the controls.

“Careful there, you’re gonna make me feel even shorter,” Virginia said, standing tall at only 5’1”.

“Oh please, even a Sangheili couldn’t make you feel small,” Connie said. Scanning over the controls, she hummed a quiet note under her breath. Directionality, duration, speed…

“Depends on the split-lip,” Virginia said. Digging her fingers up under her helmet, she tugged down the kevlar around her neck like it was choking her. Doing so, she revealed a long claw-like scar above a chicken-scratch kanji tattoo that Connie knew, from stories, meant either bastard or badass, depending on who you asked. “But fair point. Alright, buckle up. So far, the units have varied from feeling like a slam in the gut to a tickle in your implants when you turn ‘em on.”

Connie took a step back, waiting for F.I.L.S.S. to connect power to her suit. Virginia waved her arms and beckoned everyone back a little—better safe than sorry, with these things.

First things first, see what it did.

One pointed flick of her eyes over the controls was all it took to kick it on, sending out a semi-transparent duplicate of Connie’s armour about half a metre in front of her. It stopped there, stood in that same tip-toe position, and seemed to solidify. An exact copy of her, a little bit stiff but otherwise _mostly_ indistinguishable from the original, projected off of her armour.

A second later, it flickered out, leaving nothing but a tickle in the back of her head.

Connie’s face split with a grin.

That was _amazing._

“ _Wow,_ they really weren’t kidding about how high tech these things were going to be,” she said, already starting to investigate the rest of the settings. It seemed to be connected to her neural implant—did that mean it could read what she wanted it to do without manual input? “There, okay, um— this time, someone hit it.”

Another duplicate, produced at just the right time for it to mimic the motion of her bouncing. When Connie stopped, it did too. Tilting her head, she was amused to find that it did the same thing, until it froze a millisecond later, stuck in that position. Maybe there was a setting for how long it took to lock?

Virginia was the one to strike out, taking a non-committal swing at its head and yet still stumbling as her subconscious failed to register that it wasn’t solid. The moment her fist passed through it, it began to flicker, but didn’t immediately collapse. The illusion was broken, it held no further value, but the projection didn’t stop until she stopped it.

“Can you use it while moving?” Wash asked, stepping up and investigating the spot it had projected in.

Nerves buzzing with excitement, Connie barely resisted projecting another one, just to make him jump.

Her grin was audible. “No idea. Let’s try it.”

For the next hour, Virginia, Monty and Wash helped her test the functions of her unit. With each test, she was able to put together a better picture of how it worked. Strikes didn’t immediately deactivate the hologram, but it drained more power in the aftermath as it recovered its form. It could be set to take a specific position, somewhere within a limited range, or to move in tandem with her. It could even perform a number of actions based on previous holograms, so that it didn’t have to do exactly what you were doing every time. And, just as she thought, it could all be controlled through her neutral implant—manual input was optional and more stable, but it was slower, less easy to use on the fly.

Utilising it properly would require a _lot_ of practice. It required a quick mind, quick reaction times and a perfect understanding of how it behaved.

A lot of work, but worth it.

By the end of her chunk of the session, her head was spinning and she felt drained. The direct line of power from Command took the brunt of the energy needs of the unit, but whilst that no doubt alleviated the strain it would otherwise have had on her brain, it didn’t cancel it out entirely. So, after assuring the others she was fine, she decided it was best to sit the next one out.

A quick detour to the mess hall later and she was sitting in the viewing bay that connected to the locker rooms, sipping on a cool drink laced with a sachet of energy powder. A few other curious agents were scattered around the room, but the only one she really knew was the teal and purple armoured figure of Mass, who she was hardly eager to talk to.

Louisiana had taken the floor, Connie observed as she checked her messages. There was only one, from Wash, that simply read:

WA//: <did you hear that? and you said it was too crazy!>

Brow furrowing, Connie turned her full attention to the floor just in time to see Louisiana blink out of existence.

Connie’s eyes widened. Wash looked up at her from the floor below and she could practically see the shit-eating grin on his face. Laughing quietly, she put her head in her hands. “Oh I am _never_ going to hear the end of this.”

“Hear the end of what, mischief?”

Before Connie had a chance to so much as look at South, let alone answer her, there was a flash of orange in the corner of her eye and the sharp _thud_ of metal boots hitting the floor as Louisiana materialised mere inches from Mass.

Ze jumped back, almost falling on zir ass. “ _What the—_ ”

Louisiana’s thick Scottish accent pierced the room. “Oh fucking hell I think it’s about to—”

—and then she vanished. Seconds later, there was the distinct distant clatter of dinner trays and a sharp _crack_ , awfully reminiscent of that time a fight had broken out in the mess hall and Mississippi (Or was it Missouri?) had thrown Alabama through a table. In full power armour.

“Ah fuckin’ _hell_ —” echoed through the halls.

Another few seconds later and a startled squeal sounded from back in the locker room, shortly followed by the squeak of wet feet slipping on tile.

“Sorry! I can’t seem to—” and gone again.

“…that,” Connie said, after a moment’s silence. “That’s what I will never live down. Wash suggested that there would be a teleportation unit in our squad’s assignments. I called it crazy.”

South snorted. “Y’know, with that display? Wouldn’t say calling it crazy is wrong.”

“No kidding.”

“Is she gonna be okay?” South said, sounding much more amused than she had any right to and yet exactly as amused as should be expected, admittedly.

Right on cue, Louisiana popped back into existence several metres above the training floor. With a little quick thinking, Montana snapped up into the air with their evasion unit and caught her, zipping back down to the floor and _just_ about avoiding hitting a wall.

South snickered and Connie’s head fell back into her hands.

“Never a dull fuckin’ moment, huh?”

“Never a dull moment.”

South perched herself on the ledge, one leg pulled up to her chest and her head leaning back against the glass. “First time I activated my dome? York ran into it, face fuckin’ first. Would’ve cracked his fucking nose if he wasn’t in a helmet.”

“Let me guess, timed it just right?”

“Fuck yeah I did,” South said with a grin, forcing Connie to muffle another giggle into the rim of her drink. “You use it right and you can have it fuckin’ expand outwards and use it as a battering ram. Can’t fucking wait for them to solve the fuckshit with the power so we can use them in the field.”

“That’ll be a sight to behold.” Connie’s fingers tapped against the side of her glass. “I have to wonder how they’ll fix that. I’m drained just from using mine _on_ the command power line. I can’t imagine trying to use it without it.”

“Think it’d knock me flat on my fucking ass,” South said with a dismissive snort. “Real fucking flaw in the system. All this cool shit and we can’t even fucking use it.”

“Early days, I suppose.” Not that she didn’t wonder. It was one of those little things about this place that didn’t quite add up. Still, it _was_ early days, right?

South shrugged. “What is yours, anyway, mischief?”

“Holographic duplicates or decoys.”

“Oooo, twice the mischief, huh?” A cheeky glint of her own flashed in her eyes. “Sounds fun.”

Connie swatted playfully at her leg, but South blocked it, winking at her. “It _is_ fun. Needs a bit of work, I think, there’s some visual flaws, but I think I could fix those with an adjustment to the code that dictates how it scans the armour it’s in.”

“Nerd.”

“A nerd that kicked your ass at Crow’s Spire,” Connie said, raising both brows at her in a pointed look.

“Nah, you still lost. Doesn’t count.”

“No, I won that fight. I lost the _simulation_ because Red Team dogpiled me and I couldn’t _move_ to stop you getting the flag.”

“All I’m hearing is ‘I lost’,” South said, grin spread back across her face.

“One day, _one day_ , we’ll have free sparring slots at the same time and there’ll be a rematch,” Connie said, getting past South’s defences with a quick jab of her finger against her knee. “ _Then_ you’ll eat your words.”

That grin only grew brighter. “Look forward to it, mischief.”

Wash paused mid-step and mid-doorway, a grey and yellow blob in Connie’s peripheral vision. “What _are_ you doing with that? Is that your unit?” he said, narrowly dodging the closing door as it timed out.

“Yep.”

“You have your unit... hooked up to your computer.”

“Yep.”

“... _why_?” Throwing his towel onto his footlocker after one final shuffle through his hair, he dropped himself haphazardly onto his mattress—or, as he’d once called it, the ‘slightly-better-than-a-pallet-of-bricks-tress’. Not his cleverest bit of snark.

Connie shrugged, squinting at another chunk of code that she was pretty sure handled the momentum of the projections. “I don't like how stiff the holograms look, they’re _good_ but there’s just enough visual flaws to cause doubt right now. Their colour was slightly off, too.”

“So, you're what,” Wash said, fluffing up his pillow, “trying to re-write the code to make it better? Isn't that a hardware problem, not software?”

“Yes and no, respectively.”

“Okay, another question,” he said, unwittingly mimicking her squinting, “you _are_ aware that you're a hacker, not a programmer for highly experimental military tech, right?”

Connie didn’t miss a beat before she replied— “You don't know that.”

Dead silence. Connie looked past her screen and was met with a look that defied concrete description, somewhere between fear and an emotion that can only be described as ‘really?’. Barely muffling giggles, she looked back at her screen without a word.

“Actually, counterpoint,” Wash piped up, a second later, “I _do_ know that, because if you were, you probably wouldn’t annoy Mass so much.”

She had to give him that one. “Touché, Washington, touché.”

“Are you even _allowed_ to do that?” he asked, reaching for his personal data-pad and pulling up something besides a field manual, for the first time in days, going by the brief flash of colour.

“Would you believe me if I said I wouldn’t be doing it if I wasn’t?”

Wash cocked a brow at her and gave her a look that could pierce the armoured hull of a ship, if focused long enough.

“Okay, stupid question. But _yes_ , I’m allowed. The Director is all about creativity and innovation and all those buzzwords he likes to spit off, remember. All I had to do was promise I could improve it and he overrode the techs,” she said, adjusting a variable that controlled the way it tracked her positions. It was a bit out of her wheelhouse, she had to admit, but regardless, “It’s backed up anyway. And I’m not touching the hardware.”

“Alright, just don’t go staying up too late with that. We still have training at 0900.”

“Okay dad,” she teased, earning both a laugh and the playful retaliation of a small stuffed cat—no bigger than her palm, a little trinket from a time before—being thrown in her general direction. Catching it without looking, she set it on her PC. “Thank you, he can be my rubber duck for the evening. Give this little guy a break.”

She tapped the bird figurine’s beak three times and set it back on her bedside table.

The rest of the night passed by in relative quiet, companionable and familiar. Washington read and Connie worked on her unit, disturbing the silence only to unknot a problem out loud or to test a projection—laughing, when the first one caught Wash off guard and he visibly jumped.

It had been almost a year since she was approached by the Counselor. Several months since she’d climbed her way to Beta squad and cemented her place among the top half of the Project’s ranks. Mere hours since that position had been cemented further, with the award of her very own experimental armour unit.

She had no idea what tomorrow would bring. You never really did, in this place.

All she knew was that whatever it was, it was going to be interesting.

If only she’d known just _how_ interesting.


	3. Rank & Rile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for the Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/6578288fdac4b0b01926993a99ea9b06/53840d315eeecae3-5a/s640x960/40e2f84d8f0481568f03869cafe9eb5dece273f0.png) by mercysewerpyro/artsilon

Months passed. You felt every day of it, in a place like the _Invention._ Day and night cycles regulated down to the minute, without a seasonal shift. Every day filled to bursting with scheduled training sessions, classroom sessions, speciality sessions, unit sessions—sessions, sessions, sessions.

“The war does not stop for anyone, Agents. Remember that,” the Director had said, in numerous ways and on more than one occasion.

He was right. The news cycle told them that much, a steady stream of information about the latest glassings.

Missions never took them to the front lines. Not even close. It was all about the Insurrection, pockets of it that had continued their activities despite the ever-present shadow of the war looming over them, even here amongst the Inner Colonies. For months, they’d been taking down seemingly isolated cells, but there were hints of something more. Something organised.

Beta Squad was assigned to chase one such lead on their latest mission.

See, infiltration was sort of their thing. Connie was, of course, their way inside—her unique software suite and her skillset tailored to getting into places people would rather you didn’t. The twins, California and Hawaii, specialised in getting into those same places undetected and Colombia provided backup, better at fighting in close quarters. Mass provided many of the programs they needed to bypass unique defences and monitor progress.

Even those not specialised in infiltration alone had their roles. Backup—Wash, who knew every weapon in the UNSC arsenal like the back of his hand and Montana, the team tank who took hits so the others didn’t have to. Support—Nevada, who watched them from afar through a sniper scope, relaying information, a role all the more useful now that she had her mod which allowed her to see through anything. Leadership—Virginia, who had never led them wrong in all of their months together. Clean-up—Louisiana and Illinois, who planted explosives strategically to cover their tracks; Alaska, the getaway driver. Everyone had their role to play.

Beta chased down the intel that Alpha acted on, leaving no trace, and the latest mission had been no different.

Connie had gone around the back of the facility, backed up by Wash. Innies weren’t exactly known for their air-tight cybersecurity measures and it took her less than a minute to release the locks on every door in the facility, clearing the way for the twins to get inside.

The objective was a pair of computers that should have, theoretically, contained intelligence that connected this cell to another in the system, proving the running theory that they were no longer working in forced isolation. Connie had been piecing it together for months, the breadcrumbs that pointed to encrypted communications and coordinated assaults across planetary channels. Not everybody (Massachusetts) bought it, they (Massachusetts) said it was out of the scope of a simple group of Innies during wartime, but Connie had seen it before.

The cell on Resol hadn’t been well-equipped or skilled, but they had been _organised_ , they had connections _._ You learned quickly never to underestimate a team like that.

Hawaii and California were a flawless combat unit, making their way through the facility without attracting so much as raised hair on the back of someone’s neck. Connie and Wash were supposed to stay back, keep an eye on the systems and be ready to intervene where necessary, so that’s where they stayed.

Until there was a soft curse over the radio followed by a horrid _crack_.

Wash and Connie shared a look and then Wash was on the radio, “Hawaii? California? Which one of you was that? What’s wrong?”

“ _Not me. Hawaii?_ ” California said, only answered by a faint whimper and Hawaii’s orange acknowledgement light flashing on their HUDs. “ _Lena, don’t you_ dare.”

No response, until the text channel lit up:

HI//: <I’m fine but someone came around the corner and I used my unit to jump onto the adjacent roof and something in my leg snapped and I’m scared to look>

“Merda! _I’m on the other side of the facility, I can’t get to her._ ”

Connie pinged her signal. “She’s less than fifty metres from us. We could get to her, but— how close are you to your target, Cali?”

“ _Close. But I’ve ducked into an alcove. We have to hit it at the same time, right? It’s designed only to work when there’s someone at both terminals, isn’t it?_ ”

“Yeah, we do. But if Hawaii broke something…” Her fingertips scratched at the textured surface of the kevlar covering her palm. “Wash, think you can get up to that roof if I take Hawaii’s place?”

“Uh— yeah, I think so, there’s gotta be a way up,” Wash said, scanning the area in a way that Connie recognised as a tell that he had _no_ idea _how,_ but he’d find a way. “You gonna be alright on your own?”

He couldn’t see her face, but the defined eyes of her helmet made it easy to give him a look.

“Message received loud and clear. Just be careful, okay?”

“I always am,” she said, before ducking inside.

Hawaii’s decision to use her unit had, if nothing else, prevented the alarm from being raised and kept the path mercifully clear. Connie reached the hallway leading to the target room without interruption and flashed her green acknowledgement light, to let California know she was in position.

The data was half-way through downloading when Wash spoke again.

“ _Found her,_ ” he said, the pained whimpering echoing faintly in the background. “ _Looks like a compound fracture of her femur_ —” Connie winced, “ _—the force amps from her unit must have overexerted it. Medical will be able to fix her up with polymer, but I’ll do what I can for her up here. Getting her down is going to be tricky, though._ ”

Connie typed quickly, eyeing the download. Come on…

CT//: <we’ll deal with that once we have the intel, we can take all the time we need if we’re careful about it>

80%, 90%, 95%... 100%. She snatched up the drive and, on the flash of California’s green acknowledgement light, she left the facility as quickly as she’d entered.

It had taken them five minutes to get Hawaii down from the roof and another ten on top of that to get her to the extraction point, but they made it. No attention drawn; no alarms raised; no sign left behind besides a small blood stain on a roof that was out of sight from everywhere but the air.

Hawaii was fine, in a few days—besides the earful the Director gave her for unauthorised unit usage. Her injury should, “serve as a reminder to you all about the consequences of improper use of the Project’s experimental technology,” he had said.

Connie had almost reminded him that without the risk she took, they would certainly have been discovered, but his lips had pressed into a tight line and she knew better than to chance it, today.

Two days later, Wash and Connie’s comm. bands rang out in ear-splitting unison as they traded blows in an unarmoured training room.

They both flinched, but Wash recovered a second too slow and Connie took the opening without shame, sweeping the training blade across his gut and jamming her foot between his ribs. With a rough grunt, he tumbled to the floor.

“And with that, your insides are on the outside and you’re bleeding out on the ground. Have to keep that guard up, Wash,” Connie said, giggling at the over-dramatic pout that followed. She knew better than to offer him a hand with that look on his face, so instead she turned her attention to the alert.

<Squad Assignment Updated: Alpha Squad>

“Oh holy shit, we’ve been promoted,” she said, clicking the alert to expand it. Scanning it quickly, it cited recent performance in field and exemplary training statistics. “At least, I have. You might be getting demoted. That’s also a possibility.”

“Ha-ha,” Wash said, opening his own. “What do you want to bet that it has something to do with that last mission? He seemed pretty impressed with the way you had us cover for Hawaii’s injury.”

“Ah yes, we,” she coughed, putting on her worst Director impression, “‘displayed admirable ingenuity and adaptability’.”

Wash pulled a face. “That was terrible.”

“Thank you, I try.”

“I’m never going to be able to unhear that,” Wash said. Minimising the message, he stretched his arms back and cracked his neck. If she’d done her job right, he’d be inconveniently stiff within the next couple of hours.

“Oh, I could say worse in it. Don’t test me.”

“That’s more threatening than your knives,” he said, getting back into stance. Connie matched him, bouncing on her heels and watching him closely, cataloguing every twitch and shift of his body to follow his next strike. He always struck first; he didn’t have the patience to wait her out. “Man, last time I went up to Alpha I only lasted two days before someone bumped me out.”

“My record is still at a week,” Connie said, as they slowly began to circle each other. His fists flexed and he mimicked her gaze. She waited. “Guess we have to try and beat that this time, huh? Think we can make it a month or more?”

“My brain says yes. My gut says no,” he said. “Those guys are on a whole other level.”

“A level the Director thinks we can match.”

“Yeah, no pressure there.”

He adjusted the position of his feet. And then the position of his arms. And of his fingers. Connie raised a brow at him, holding sure and steady. She moved smoothly, barely bobbing at all with the shifting of her feet across the mat in a slow circle, patient and unyielding.

She tilted her head.

Wash, groaning at himself, lunged forward.

She tracked the trajectory of his fist and ducked at the last second, spinning on her heel and around his side. She swiped across his back and he arched his spine, nearly toppling forward in the process. Catching himself, he twisted around just in time to block another slash of the serrated edge of her blade. Connie knocked his block aside and ducked down, dodging a follow-up punch to sweep his legs out from under him.

Wash hit the ground with a heavy thud and groaned, winded once again.

“Every time,” he said, once he’d regained his breath, “ _every_ time, I let you bait me. Every damn time.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” she teased, nudging him in the side with her foot. Wash batted her leg with all the force and anger of a mildly perturbed kitten. “Patience, my young padawan—” (“Oh _god._ ”) “—learn some, and maybe I won’t keep handing your ass to you on a silver platter.”

“I don’t think that’s how that quote goes.”

Connie snorted, her nose crinkling adorably, and kicked him in the side again. “Up. C’mon. I’m going to teach you proper knife blocks and striking techniques if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Yes ma’am. Um, Sir? Uh— fuck.” Wash sat up, his brow creased in thought. “Is there even a gender-neutral version of that?”

Rolling her eyes with a smile, Connie helped him up. “You tried. Now come on, show me a fight worthy of being in Alpha Squad.”

Wash groaned, stretching out his aching muscles and getting back into position.

By the end of the session, they’d gone 10-3 in Connie’s favour.

Connie still wasn’t quite sure how it was possible, but, as usual, Alpha squad’s training schedule was even more jam-packed than Beta’s had been. Combat training, unit training, specialised work, class sessions and missions already accounted for almost every waking hour aboard the _Invention_ , but every promotion to Alpha squad came with the introduction of extra slots, squeezed into every free minute command could find.

Session difficulty and length was also scaled up. Routine performance drills took two hours instead of one; the number of simulated hostiles in the training chamber doubled; the timers on specialised training were halved. This was what it meant to be promoted, but by the time you received the alert your schedule had already been updated; there was no time to prepare yourself.

Connie had expected no different, but that didn’t make it any less _exhausting._

Awake an hour earlier than she was used to and nursing the aches and pains of yesterday’s sparring sessions, she slipped into the dead silence of the central hub. No one else was around at this time of the morning, but the screens were as bright as ever and Connie took her usual place off to the side, squinting through sleep-addled eyes at the scrolling feed.

Her nails caught at the scar across her palm until she didn’t find what she was looking for. At the same time, she let go of the breath she was holding.

Nothing today. Nothing today.

“Hey there, mischief.”

Connie straightened her back and brushed the long side of her hair behind her ear. “Hey, South.”

South stepped up beside her, taking advantage of their height difference to rest her elbow on the top of Connie’s head. Connie retracted her head into her neck until it fell away, shoving her playfully. South snorted, grinning down at her in that way that made Connie’s own lips tug against the weight of her exhaustion.

“Heard you made it up to Alpha again. Congratulations,” she said, her purple-tipped fringe falling over her eyes. A half-hearted attempt to blow it away only ended with it back where it started, if differently arranged. “First time you’ve been up since Crow’s Spire, right?”

“Sure is. Hoping to beat my record. Two more days and this’ll be my longest stretch in Alpha,” Connie said, muffling a yawn in the back of her hand as her shoulders rolled. “Hopefully by then, I’ll have adapted to the new routine. Never have been very good with disruptions like this.”

“I’m rooting for you, mischief. Make it to two weeks and I’d say you’re secure, the other assholes will start treating you like an actual part of the squad.” Bumping her shoulder, she flashed her that grin and added, “Make it like, a _month_ , they’ll even move your bunk. Maybe you can be my new bunkmate. Save me from fuckin’ Georgia.”

Connie quirked a brow. “Let me guess, that insufferable streak from when they were promoted never went away?”

South’s resounding groan was an answer all its own. “Like—okay, they’re fine, they’re not the worst bunkmate I’ve ever had—that title goes to my asshole brother—but they’re a _real_ fucking titnugget sometimes and act like they have a whole fucking _log_ up their ass, nevermind a fucking stick.”

“ _Titnugget?_ ”

“That’s what I fuckin’ said. Titnugget.”

“That is— that is a new one,” Connie said, unable to keep the laughter from flowing beneath her words if she’d wanted to. “Quite possibly the most original insult I’ve heard from you yet.”

“Mischief. _Connie_. You stick around, you’re gonna hear much, _much_ worse than that,” South said, with an air of seriousness that only made Connie want to laugh harder.

“I look forward to it.”

As they were talking, they watched as a pair of the _Invention’s_ generic technicians came into the room with a hovering pallet and a toolkit. Neither broke the momentum of the conversation, but South’s head tilted and Connie peered past the seats ahead of them at the shiny black surface laid atop the pallet.

The technicians set about taking down the two centremost screens from the wall, deactivating them and detaching them from their mounts. The mounts themselves came down soon after.

Connie frowned. The information on the surrounding screens continued to cycle, but nothing from those absent screens seemed to have transferred across. Her fingernails dragged across her palm again and, glancing over at South, she forced herself to make eye contact to share a look.

South, thankfully, seemed to read her concern.

“Uh, hey, techie assholes,” she said, “what the fuck are you doing? They broken or something?”

One of the two snapped to attention, whilst the other arranged the removed screens on the pallet. “No, ma’am. We’ve been instructed to remove and replace them entirely. Director’s orders.”

“Replace them with what?” Connie said, just as the other tech beckoned the first down and they both took two corners of a much larger screen—the shiny black surface taking up a significant chunk of the pallet. Of course. “Oh.”

Question answered, Connie folded her arms and watched as they began to install the new screen. It was the width of the previous two screens combined and twice as tall, to match, filling the space left behind and becoming the centrepiece of the wall.

“Talk about an upsize. Wonder what that fuckin’ beast is for,” South said, resting her arm back on top of Connie’s head. Connie didn’t move, this time. She only shifted on her heels, focused dead ahead. “Another newsfeed?”

“Maybe. I hope so.” Nails caught sharper at the raised scar tissue. “These screens are the only contact we have with outside.”

“I haven’t checked these things in months,” South said. “Nothing for me to see. Anything big, North will tell me.”

Connie’s stance relaxed, slightly. Nudging her arm away, a hint that South took without issue, she looked up at her. “…your home colony already gone?”

“ _Мечта-II,_ yeah _._ Been gone for _years_. Got hit maybe two, three months after we fuckin’ left. Didn’t hear about it for almost six months after that,” South said. There was tension, in her shoulders, her jaw, and yet otherwise she seemed completely at ease. “You know the story, I’m sure; outer colony gets glassed, communications are knocked out, news only gets out once the survivors make it somewhere or someone notices the lines of communication have been dead for however long.”

“I do,” Connie sighed, resting a hand on her arm regardless. A little of that tension released beneath it. “I’m sorry.”

South shrugged. “Bit of a shithole anyway. Don’t think about it much. You, though, you’re in here a lot.”

Every morning. Straight after breakfast, without fail. Four-hundred and sixty-three days and counting.

“Yeah. I guess I’m… sort of the opposite.” Letting her hand fall away from South’s bicep, the laugh that escaped her was subdued, awkward. “Resol. I haven’t seen anything yet, so… no news is good news, right?”

The statement hung heavy in the air, caught on the resistance of that all too familiar story.

But South looped her arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze and, for a moment, as Connie let her head fall against her side, the unease seemed to fade away.

Her comm. band beeped.

Fifteen-minute warning.

Closing her eyes and biting her lip, Connie released a deep sigh. “I suppose I better get going.”

South gave her a sympathetic look, clapping her shoulder. “Good fuckin’ luck. Floor session?”

“Target range. You?”

“Got a free hour or so. North’s stuck in medical again because the fuckpot doesn’t know how not to be a dramatic ass and jump in front of a sniper round for me. So, I’m gonna go give him shit,” South said. Rummaging around in her pocket, she pulled out what had to be at least three bags of chocolate covered cashews. “And eat his favourite snack in front of him until he admits he’s a dumbass.”

Connie blinked. “ _Again?_ How often does—?”

“If he doesn’t pull that bullshit at least once a month, the world would probably end.”

 _Siblings_ , Connie thought, muffling another laugh. “I know his type. I have a—”

Her band beeped again.

Connie groaned. “Okay, okay, for fuck’s sake.”

“You can trick it by taking a couple steps. Only wants to know you’re moving at that point.”

“I know,” she said with a sigh, and she did know. She knew all the little tricks and workarounds. But tricking the system was the last thing on her mind when in the _middle_ of a _conversation_. “I should be going anyway. See you around, South.”

“See you around, mischief,” South said, with a parting grin.

As she left, Connie found she couldn’t help but bounce up onto the tips of her toes.

The screen in the hub was the first of many. Connie saw a second in the mess hall, as she took her lunch break for the day, hung on the wall overlooking the tables in the back, usually favoured by Gamma squad. Not yet enabled, the dark surface acted as a mirror, reflecting her own curious expression back at her as she crossed the room.

“What’s that face for?” Wash asked, as she sat down across from him and he pinched a fry from her plate.

“Nothing important. That’s just the second new screen I’ve seen today,” she said, stabbing and stealing a rather dry baby carrot from his plate. “I’m wondering what they’re for.”

“News, maybe?”

“Maybe. That makes sense for the hub, but… why in here?”

Wash shrugged and the conversation ended there, but Connie couldn’t seem to keep her gaze away from the dark shape in her periphery.

The third and fourth were in Beta Hall, on the wall between the first two rooms on the left and the last two on the right. Inactive and blank, like the others. Oriented vertically, rather than horizontally, designed to fit the space.

What were they _for?_

Connie stood outside their door and squinted at it for a long moment, before keying in the door code and trying to put it out of her mind—something easier said than done.

Over the next few days, new screens appeared in a variety of areas frequented by agents, across the living and training zones. Hallways; the classroom; select training rooms; med bay; and even the rec rooms were outfitted with screens of various sizes, as well as several screens in the locker room and viewing bays being replaced. This was a precursor to something, that much was obvious, but the question remained about _what_ that something was.

Though it seemed to be a question only Connie really cared to ask.

Four days without answers or any sign of the screens becoming active and Connie began to wonder if she _was_ overreacting. With a tendency to get caught up on little, unimportant things, it was entirely possible that she was seeing something that wasn’t there. Perhaps it was a cosmetic choice, or a simple logistical decision to provide more widespread access to information, once they were active.

By day 5, she’d mostly succeeded in ignoring it.

On day 6, the screens turned on.

There was no fanfare. Hell, most of the ship wasn’t even _awake_ when they were finally activated. Connie woke up to Wash shaking her, half an hour before her alarm was set, with no alerts on her comm. and no idea what was so important he was willing to take the risk of waking her early.

Half-awake and her senses dulled, she barely caught the words ‘screens’ and ‘on’, but that was enough. Connie threw herself out of bed and ran (jogged, groggily) into the hall in her night clothes.

The screen between their room and the one shared by Montana and Louisiana was lit up with the familiar blue interface of the _Invention’s_ displays, organised into a list, much like those used to display teams in group training matches. Except instead of being broken down into groups, it was one, continuous list, numbered from 11–18.

11\. Virginia  
12\. Montana  
13\. Columbia  
14\. Nevada  
15\. Nebraska  
16\. Hawaii  
17\. California  
18\. Louisiana

Connie rubbed her eyes hard enough to see stars and blinked away the haze of sleep. “Is that— a _leaderboard?_ ”

“Looks like it,” Wash said. “Command must have had this behind the scenes the whole time.”

“I mean— we figured they had _something_ like this.” Glancing behind them, she could see a similarly formatted list on the screen down the hall that must have contained the final seven agents in the squad. “They had to decide the team leaders somehow and I _told_ you it couldn’t have only been on military rank.” Certainly not with Maryland at the head of Gamma, with her Insurrectionist background. “We’ve been calling Carolina the number one for _months_.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“But— why make it _visible?_ ”

“Motivation, or some bullcrap like that, I’d hazard,” came a voice behind them. Connie looked over her shoulder as Virginia stepped up and examined the board, tilting her head as she mouthed each name and number to herself. “Mostly accurate, I suppose. Shame to see Nebraska there.”

“It’s a shame to see Nebraska anywhere,” Wash said, completely dry.

A smirk tugged at the corner of Virginia’s lips, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes crinkling. “It sure is.” Nodding towards the board, she said, “Figure you two’ll have to check Alpha Hall or somewhere communal, to see where you’re placed. The system connected to our bands doesn’t seem to be up yet.”

A few taps on their comm. bands proved both the existence of such a system and its lack of functionality: a virtual version of the leaderboard that was still completely blank.

“Did you have any idea this was coming, Gin?” Connie said.

Virginia shook her head. “Not a clue. Whatever the Director has planned for this thing, I don’t know what it is. But it doesn’t change how I run my team.”

And Connie believed that. Virginia knew better than almost anyone on this ship how to get a team of largely ragtag and unruly, if highly skilled, soldiers to work together and work together _well._ So, Connie smiled, and nodded.

“I don’t doubt that.”

With a little prodding from Wash, Connie threw on her civvies and sped through the early stages of her morning routine so they could get moving. The ship was more active than usual for the hour. Small clusters of agents were gathered in the hallways, examining each squad’s respective boards. People were waking up their bunkmates and dragging them outside to see their rankings—Connie was, at least, not the _only_ one who’d been rudely awoken that morning.

As two of the only agents who had not awoken to their own ranks outside their doors, it wasn’t until they reached the mess hall that they got their chance to see. The mess was comparatively quiet, with only a few agents milling around who were seemingly entirely disinterested in the boards—Nevada, Maine, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. So, there was no one between them and the screen hanging over those back tables, displaying the numbers 1-8.

1\. Carolina  
2\. York  
3\. Wyoming  
4\. South Dakota  
5\. North Dakota  
6\. Maine  
7\. Connecticut  
8\. Washington

“Hey, look at that, we’re top eight,” Wash said, nudging Connie in the shoulder with his elbow.

“Strange that it’s not showing all the way to ten,” Connie said, her arms crossed under her chest and her brow furrowed. “Alpha has ten members, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Wash said. “Georgia and— someone else?”

“Florida,” Maine grunted, passing by with a tray _piled_ with food from the breakfast bar.

“What the big guy said.”

“I don’t know. It just seems weird to only show _part_ of the top squad.” Really, _all_ of this seemed weird, but some things stood out more than others. Sighing, Connie shook her head and brushed the questions piling in her mind to the side, for now at least. “Anyway… yeah. Top eight. I guess that bodes well for our chances of staying up.”

“Definitely. Come on, the Director will probably send out a message or call a meeting later. We can play Connie’s Question Time after that,” Wash said, throwing an arm around her shoulder and squeezing her tight. Connie made a mock choking noise and pressed her face into his shoulder, rolling her eyes.

“Alright, alright,” she said, muffled by his shirt. He fuzzed the shaved side of her head and gave her a gentler squeeze.

“For now, let’s take advantage of everyone else being distracted like Maine clearly has—” a gruff chuckle sounded from the nearby bench, “—and get a decent plate of food.”

Right on cue, Connie’s stomach rumbled; she muffled a laugh in his shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”

By the time more agents started to filter in, they’d not only filled up their plates and taken seats by Maine, but almost finished eating entirely. South, running late, came by just in time to grab a snack bar and ruffle Connie’s hair before she was due on the training floor, her band beeping incessantly the entire time.

Connie adamantly ignored the knowing look Wash gave her, choosing instead to stuff the entirety of her remaining croissant into his mouth and laugh hysterically at his bemused expression.

She had almost an hour left before her morning session once they’d finished eating and Wash had left for his own. So, with time to spare, she undertook a little investigation.

Most of the screens mimicked the one in the mess hall: ranks 1-8, static and simple. Others showed select chunks, like those outside the bunks, or changed, depending on who was utilising the relevant facility at the time. The screen in the hub was unique in that it cycled slowly through all ranks, ten at a time.

Each agent was marked as active or inactive and with an icon that she could only assume was meant to represent their speciality—a command star for Carolina and Virginia, a fist for Maine and Monty, a grenade for Louisiana and Illinois, and for her, a little computer icon.

Finally, there was a number; multiple digits, increasing the further up the board you went, but without a label or a clear metric to rate it against.

She had as many new questions as she had answers, when her band finally let her know her time was up.

Eyeing her rank one more time, she sighed and headed to the locker room.

There was no official statement from the Director. Nor was there a briefing called, to explain the purpose of this new system of evaluation. It was simply activated and left to sit, as agents gossiped, debated and argued about everything from the rankings themselves to what they were being ranked _for._

Top bet as of the end of day three was that it was to decide the ultimate agents, who the Director would then have fight to the death.

It wasn’t a very… _serious_ betting pool.

“It’s just a way of measuring our performance and keeping us on our toes,” Massachusetts said, the next time they were assigned to the Intelligence Centre at the same time. “I helped design the system. The outward-facing parts of it, at least.”

Connie only half looked up from her screen. “You did? When?”

“I _do_ have shifts without you, you know,” ze said, rolling zir eyes. Connie barely resisted the childish urge to mouth along mockingly. “It’s been my main project outside of TURNCOAT. The Director wanted it up and running for the start of the year, which it is.”

Work on the TURNCOAT system had been sporadic, at best. Connie had important, time-sensitive work to do with the intel retrieved from their missions against the Insurrection that took precedence and Mass had, apparently, been working on this new leaderboard. What sessions they _did_ have together still descended rapidly into bickering and petty disagreements. Not to mention the fact Connie was still being forced to mimic zir code structure which slowed her progress dramatically.

They were aiming to have a Beta release prepared for the end of the month, but it was up in the air if that was actually on the cards. If pressed, Connie would admit it really wasn’t.

“We’re already half-way through January,” Connie said, “doesn’t that make it two weeks late?”

Massachusetts ignored the question. “Everyone’s looking at it _much_ too deeply. Like I said, it’s just a way of measuring our performance and making that measurement tangible.”

“But _how_ does it measure performance?” Giving up on focusing on the code in front of her, she sat back and tucked her legs up under her. As she did, she continued to roll her string of beads in her hand—secondary stimulation, to keep her on task. “You built it; did you make the algorithms?”

“Oh, no. I was told to design it for input from an external source, but they didn't tell me what that source was. _I_ figure it’s the ship AI,” ze said, zir tone bordering on conspiratorial. “Why they wouldn't just tell me that, I don’t know, but it’s what makes the most sense. F.I.L.S.S. has all the data needed.”

Connie bit her tongue. _Maybe it has to do with your history with ship AI,_ she wanted to say, but didn’t. She wasn’t supposed to know about that and, as much as they didn’t get on, it would have been a low blow.

“That would make sense,” she said, instead, turning back to her screen. “It still feels… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like a good enough answer.”

“It’s the _only_ answer, Connecticut. I don’t know what better answer you want, but you’re not going to get it,” Mass said with another roll of zir eyes, already highlighting another portion of the code in front of zir. “This section. There’s still a flaw in the way it extrapolates enemy signals.”

“I know, I know. It still mimics the base signal too closely; I’m working on it.”

“Oh really? Because right now, you’re asking a bunch of questions.”

Breathing out slowly through her nose, Connie squeezed the beads tight in her fist.

She would not kill Agent Massachusetts. She would _not_ kill Agent Massachusetts.

Sighing heavily, Connie dropped her head against the door of her locker with a sharp _clunk._

One of these days, she really _was_ going to kill Agent Massachusetts.

Rolling her beads back and forth in her fist, she took a moment to gather herself. Sitting herself on the bench she then set about removing her armour piece by piece, starting with the arm pieces and chest plate. Unarmoured training was up next, a round of simple drills and then a sparring match against—she double checked her schedule—Agent York. With any luck, he’d be less of a pain in the ass than Mass was.

She’d caught a time between transfers, a few minutes early leaving and determined to keep ahead of the sharp reminders from her band. The only sound was the barely audible humming of the large screen in the centre of the back wall, repurposed into a leaderboard from a simple training schedule, looming over the room—bright blue light in the corner of her eye.

So, when the quiet, choked sob broke the silence, she heard it, clear as day.

She paused, for a moment, and waited. A muffled sniffle followed a few seconds later, coming from one row of lockers over. Connie carefully placed her final gauntlet down on the bench and stood, walking just as carefully towards the sound.

There, sitting on the floor between the bench and her locker, was Ohio.

The slight shaking of her unmistakable afro-puff of pink hair was the only thing that betrayed her muffled sobs, with her face buried in her armoured knees. Connie had to listen closely to hear anything at all.

“…Ohio?” she said, before she started to approach.

Ohio jumped, swiping the back of her hands across her face. “O-Oh! Connie! I— I didn’t realise you were in here. I didn’t realise _anyone_ was in here. Um— I’m okay! Don’t mind me. I should be— I should be getting to— oh who am I _kidding_ ,” with a sharp, wet sniff, she dropped her head back against the locker, “I’m not going _anywhere_.”

Any other time, Connie would have struggled not to laugh at the rapid way Ohio sped through her thoughts—started at one extreme and came out on the other. Instead, her face was set with sympathy as she sat down beside her, close enough to talk but not so close she was intruding.

“What’s wrong, Ohio?” she said, tilting her head slightly.

“I— I was—” Her words contorted into a distressed whine and her face into a screwed-up ball, a fresh stream of tears welling in her eyes. Her lips trembled and a tear dribbled down her face, then another, then another. “The— the _leaderboard_ , the leaderboard and— the ranks and— and everyone’s _talking,_ and I can feel them all _looking_ at me and— and— oh god, they all know. They all know I’m a _fraud_.”

“Hey hey hey, slow down,” Connie said, placing a hand cautiously on her knee. “Deep breaths, Ohio, come on.”

“Right, right. Deep breaths, deep breaths,” Ohio said, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling. The tears didn’t stop, but her lip stopped trembling and her breathing evened out. “Deep— deep breaths.”

Connie squeezed her knee and gave her time to mostly compose herself before prompting, “So… the leaderboard?”

“Yeah. Yeah the— the leaderboard.” She rubbed her face, squishing her cheek under the heel of her palm. “ _Fuck._ We— we came out and saw it, you know? Like everybody else! Ida— Idaho woke me up and he tried to warn me, he tried to _warn_ me but— but it didn’t matter. It doesn’t _change_ anything. We’re still in the _bottom_ _three slots_ out of the _entirety of the Project!_ ”

Connie flinched. _Oooh. Ouch._

“Ohio…” she started, only to trail off.

Ohio’s lip started trembling again and she took a moment, breathing in, then out, before speaking again. “I-Iowa doesn’t seem to care; he’s number 49 and apparently, that’s his favourite number! Idaho is— is trying to be logical about it but— but—” Another deep breath. “He’s 48. I’m 47. So, it’s not like _I’m_ at the _bottom_ of the bottom, I guess? But it sure feels like it when everyone keeps _looking_ at me.”

“Hey, if Iowa’s only 49, then doesn’t that mean—”

“Rhode Island died last week.”

“…oh. Shit.”

“And now! Everyone’s _whispering_ about us and looking at us funny when we walk into the room! Because we’re the worst of the worst!” Ohio’s voice pitched up, climbing and climbing until she was almost hysterically _laughing_. “This is all just— just one big _joke_ to them all _,_ isn’t it? Ha ha, look at the _stupid_ ones. This place was— this place was supposed to be my _chance_ , to _prove_ that I was a _good soldier._ But no. I’m the third _worst_.”

“Ohio…” What could she say, to that? Nothing she said could turn back the clock and make the leaderboard disappear or make it any less real. So, she squeezed her knee again and, with a sigh, said, “I can’t… I can’t say anything that will make that go away. But I can tell you that you shouldn’t let your position on that stupid board dictate how good of a soldier you are. And I can tell you that whoever it is looking at you funny or gossiping behind your back? They’re _assholes._ ”

Ohio snorted, rubbing her nose. “Easy for _you_ to say. You’re in the top ten,” she bit, only to immediately cover her mouth as her eyes widened. “Oh my god I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that! I’m— I’m just— _ugh._ I _hate_ this.”

Connie smiled softly, shaking her leg. “It’s alright, Ohio. You’re right. But… don’t let it get you down, okay? Once the novelty of the board dies down people won’t care so much.”

“I _guess…_ ”

“You’re not less of an agent than they are. You were picked for this Project for a reason, just like they were,” Connie said, offering her an arm. Ohio wiped her face dry of her remaining tears and accepted it, letting Connie wrap that arm around her shoulders.

“I _gueeeess_ …” Ohio said, pouting.

Connie laughed under her breath. At least she wasn’t crying anymore; she was starting to sound a little more like her usual self. “There’s no ‘I guess’ about it, Ohio. It’s true.”

And it _was_ ; Connie had seen in her file. Like any other agent, Ohio had attracted the Project’s attention for her raw skill, and, like any other agent, she had accusations on file that led them to her in the first place. Those accusations had to be some of the _tamest_ on the ship—she was accused of abandoning her post because she’d become flustered, which she’d always denied.

Funny, really, how the three most innocent agents in the Project were the three on the bottom rungs of the ladder.

“…thanks, Connie,” Ohio said, sniffling a little but otherwise calm.

“No need,” Connie said, rubbing her shoulder. The room was quiet once again and her question about how long they had until the rush was answered both by the sharp beeping of her own comm. band, and the strangely echoed sound, muffled behind them. “Is… that your comm. band? Where is it?”

“Oh, it’s in my locker. It was beeping at me already and that— that didn’t help with the… crying. Thing. So, I put it in there,” Ohio said, sighing. “I hate that thing.”

“You’re definitely not alone there.”

They both got to their feet and Ohio pulled her comm. band back on, at which point the beeping quietened significantly.

“These things really don’t like it when we take them off, do they?” Connie said, shaking her head. “You okay to go to your training session, or do you want me to cover for you? Because I can do that.”

“No, no, I— I should go. I’m not going to get out of the bottom ranks if I don’t do my sessions,” she said, though it lacked any sense of motivation. Picking up her helmet, she slipped it on and let the seals snap into place. “Thanks again, Connie.”

Connie smiled. “Like I said, no need. Go on. See you later, Ohio.”

Ohio left just as other agents began to filter into the room, chatter about the goddamn leaderboard echoing off the walls and scattering the sombre silence that had filled it before. Connie sighed, wrapping her hand around the beeping band on her wrist to muffle its incessant noise.

She was definitely going to be late.

Luckily, as she learned when she finally arrived, Agent York was far from a stickler for the rules.

“Sorry, sorry, I know I’m super late,” she said as she burst in, sighing in relief as her band finally stopped objecting to her tardiness. “I was getting ready and then I got distracted and—”

“Hey, no sweat, I only got here a couple of minutes ago myself,” York said, flashing her a lopsided grin. “Connecticut, right?”

“You can just call me Connie, everyone else does,” Connie said, pulling her fist wraps from her pockets and winding them around her hands. “It’s easier to say.”

That and it was her name. Not that she was allowed to tell anyone that.

“Connie, alright,” York said, nodding along. He shrugged. “Seriously, though, I’ve been way later than that before, so don’t worry about it. I’ve just been here jerking my arm around to keep the band satisfied. Pretty sure it thinks I just broke the record for the most jumping jacks performed in a five-minute period.”

Connie raised a brow. “What does it say?”

“Let’s see…” He checked the band. “200 in the last minute. Yeah, I don’t think that’s even physically possible.”

“Probably not,” Connie said with a giggle. Tying off her wraps, she fell into stance. “You ready to spar, or has your world record attempt tired you out?”

“Y’know, it was rough, but I think I can manage,” York said with another lopsided grin. He beckoned her forward. “Show me what you’ve got.”

For all of his banter and remarkably casual attitude, York fought just as well as his position at number two on the board suggested he would. Connie went down time and time again and watched as, time and time again, the indecipherable digits in the board’s rightmost column changed.

By the end they had changed so much that she found that she was almost worried she’d drop a place, even though, looking again, it was unclear how her new numbers related to those on either side of her at all.

Connie frowned. How was that supposed to help people improve?

Within a few days, the fuss around the board’s reveal started to fade and, within another week, most agents had accepted the board as a part of day-to-day life on the ship. Those unlabelled numbers shifted in unintelligible ways and ranks in the lower squads seemed fluid, agents cycling their way through a few rankings as they switched out with other members of their teams.

It all became background noise in an already ever-active program, easily ignored until it became relevant.

Unless you were Connie, who couldn’t seem to filter it out no matter how hard she tried.

“It’s so— _imposing_. No, that’s not quite the right word…”

“Intrusive?”

“Yes! It’s intrusive as all _fuck_ , Wash.”

Wash smacked the pesky corner of his footlocker down and snapped it closed. Everything packed away, ready to transport. “I’ll admit it’s a little weird to have it looming over us basically all of the time, but it’s only been a couple of weeks, Connie. You’ll tune it out eventually.”

“Hm.” Connie sat on her bed with her legs crossed so tightly it should have been uncomfortable and _would_ have been for anyone but her. Holding her feet, she rocked slightly. Her nose was scrunched.

“I know that face,” Wash said, almost accusatory. “Don’t overthink it, Connie. C’mon. It’s just a leaderboard.”

“But why do we _need_ it? It’s _weird_ , is what it is.”

“There’s a lot of weird things about the Project; it’s an ONI SpecOps program,” not that command had ever admitted it, but it was obvious, “things are going to be weird. This is _far_ from the weirdest thing. Remember when you got hung up on our lack of ranks?”

Connie shifted up onto her knees. “And that’s another thing!” (“Oh god.”) “Is this meant to replace an actual, formal ranking structure? Do I answer to Maine, now? Or South? Do _you_ answer to _me_ , because I’m one spot above you? Or do only the squad leaders count as having an actual, tangible command position?”

“I think it’s the latter.”

“You _think_ , you _think_ ,” Connie said, wagging a finger in his general direction. “And that’s exactly my point! We don’t know!”

“You know,” Wash said, sitting back on his heels and looking at her, “I’m actually going to miss Connie’s Question Time.”

Connie raised a brow at him and smiled, tossing one of the loose chews he’d left on her bedside over at him. Groaning, he popped his locker open again and tossed it inside. “You know we’ll still be seeing each other _every day_ , right? You’re not getting rid of me or my questions that easily.”

“Yeah, but there’s a certain charm to being stuck in a bunk all night with the most curious person I’ll ever meet,” Wash teased, that almost boyish grin of his spread across his face. Connie huffed, but she couldn’t keep herself from mirroring him. “Besides, I’m also going to miss our other little rituals. I doubt Maine’s going to play Droplet pong with me—” a stupid game they had where they threw _Droplets_ , the cheapest sweets in the commissary that tasted a little like a chemical burn, into each other’s mouths from across the room, “—they don’t seem the type.”

“Oh, I don’t know, they have quite the sweet tooth, from what I’ve seen,” Connie said, finally swinging her legs off the bed to move the pile of her belongings from the foot of it to her locker. “We’ll just have to level it up to hard mode and only play it in the rec room.”

Wash chuckled.

Connie packed her stuff away in her footlocker and sat on the floor, leaning back on her hands. “What do you say we lay out our blankets on the floor and project some dumb movie on the wall? Make a night of it.”

“What, you _don’t_ want to spend our last night as bunkmates just talking about the leaderboard?” Wash asked, dryly. His face split back into a grin just in time for Connie to slide across the floor and pull him into a headlock. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”

“I know you are, mister sarcastic,” she said, ruffling his hair until it resembled a particularly poorly constructed birds’ nest. “Come on, grab the blankets.”

“Sir yes sir!” Wash said, giving her a horribly limp mock salute with the wrong arm. Connie laughed, slapping his hand. “What? Like you said, you’re a rank above me.”

There was no shit-eating grin on his face, _yet_ , but it was in his voice. Connie quirked a brow again and punched him in the shoulder _just_ hard enough for the exaggerated ‘ow’ that followed to have a note of truth to it.

“And you know full well that even if I _did_ outrank you in any meaningful sense, which I _don’t_ —” (“Ooh, careful, top secret intel that.”) “—you would get _so_ much shit for that.”

“Exactly the—” Wash paused as a blanket dropped over his head, covering him completely, “—point. Really, Connie?”

Connie was too busy laughing to answer.

Close to a month after their promotion, their position in Alpha was finally considered stable enough for them to be transferred to Alpha Hall—just as South said it would be. They were a part of Alpha Squad now, for _real_ this time. Unfortunately, with that came the end of their time as bunkmates, as Wash was assigned to a bunk with Agent Maine and Connie, well…

South _cackled_. “Holy fucking shit, you _actually_ fuckin’ got Georgia transferred to another room!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Connie said, eyes glinting with the same mischief that tugged at one corner of her lips.

“You _did_ , you totally fucking did! You got them reassigned down the fuckin’ hall, didn’t you? No way the assholes up top would shift them on their own!” Throwing her arms up, she fell back against her bed with a loud thump and laughed. “Fucking amazing. How’d you do it?”

“Now that would be telling,” Connie said with a wink, popping open her footlocker, set perfectly aligned at the foot of her new bed. It was the opposite side of the room to the last one. That would take some getting used to. “The Project’s internal security isn’t as tight as they think it is, let’s just say that.”

“Holy cocking fuck, mischief. You really are a little hacker.” South popped up, propping herself on her elbows. “Does that mean you have dirt on everyone?”

“M _ay_ be,” Connie said, almost sing-song. South grinned and wiggled her eyebrows. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to _tell_ you any of it, though. Not _that_ easily.”

“Awww, spoilsport.”

“Put a little work in, ask me again another time,” Connie teased. Sifting through her belongings, she pulled out her nightclothes and set them on the foot of the bed. Her data-pad and PC joined them soon after, along with a few little trinkets she’d managed to keep a hold of and her knives, ready for cleaning.

“Would bribery work?”

“Depends on the bribe.”

Everything out of her footlocker that needed to be out, she stood up and started reorganising. Nightclothes by her pillow, her data-pad on her side table, her computer under the bed. One blade set down within reach when she was sleeping, for emergencies. A disguised holo-still, filled with memories, placed like a coaster. Other little bits and pieces, put where they’d be needed.

Finally, she picked up the small likeness of a bird, just big enough to fill her hands cupped into a sphere. It was a pale brown, with a dark stripe over its eyes—like a thief’s mask. Holding it in one hand, she tapped its beak once, twice, three times, before carefully placing it down beside her knife.

“What’s that?” South asked, sitting up properly and peering over at the trinket.

“It’s a shrike,” Connie said, sitting on the edge of her bed. South’s expression was blank, without recognition, so she continued, “A species of bird from Earth. They’re known for impaling their prey on thorns, or barbed wire—sharp things, you know? Makes them easier to eat. My brother gave it to me, when I was younger; after I started getting into knives.” Rubbing its head, she smiled fondly. “Said they reminded him of me.”

“Cute, tiny, but deadly,” South said, snorting, “sounds about right.”

Connie tapped the shrike three times more on the beak. “I’ve managed to smuggle it along with me ever since I left home.”

“Screw the Project’s rules about our pasts, huh?”

“Oh absolutely. I’m keeping what belongings I have.”

South grinned. “Rebellious little shit. No wonder we get on.”

Connie matched her grin, pressing the bottoms of her feet together and starting to rock, relaxing into the easy atmosphere of the room. South was an easy person to be around, Connie had found; you knew what you were getting with her, she wore her heart, her anger, her _everything_ on her sleeve. Handy, when you struggled to navigate those sorts of things in others.

Plus, she was _fun._

“So…” Connie said, watching as South flopped backwards on her bed. Her purple tank top bunched up slightly, exposed the bright splashes of ink that painted her hip. Galaxies, bisected by defined lines that formed a design hidden beneath the material, running beneath her sweats and up her shoulder. Roses and thorns and barbed wire entangled around her bicep. “What can _you_ tell me about the others?”

“What, your snooping not tell you enough?” South said. Laid out on the bed, her head dangling off the foot, it was clearer than ever just how tall she was. _Мечта-II_ was a lower-grav colony.

South raised a brow, and Connie tore her eyes away from her body to look at her face, instead. Something flashed in South’s eyes, the corner of her lips quirked.

“I can learn a lot of _practical_ things. Objective things. Not what people are like in reality. You have no idea how wrong I got Wash before I met him,” Connie said, shaking her head with a quiet laugh. “I had him down as stoic and serious. Quiet, professional, ‘get the job done and don’t bother me after’.”

“Really? Wow, Connie.”

“In my defence, he can be very-no nonsense in the field and he is very good at his job, but— files don’t tell you everything about a person.”

“No shit. Alright, okay, I can do some dirt of my own.” Letting her arms fall above her head, dangling off the edge of the bed to rest on her footlocker, she pulled a face. “ _Fuck_. Where to start… okay, first off, nothing really _changes_ when you're up here, y'know. Sure, missions get harder, the Dickrector's—” (“ _Dickrector?_ Holy shit, South.”) “—looming over you more, but really it's the same old bullshit whatever squad you're in. You just get to dick around with the fuckin' cool kids now.”

Connie raised a brow. “The cool kids, huh?”

“Eh, probably overselling ‘em,” South said. Connie bit back a smile. “Okay—North? Asshole. That’s all you need to fuckin’ know. He’s gonna act all fuckin’ nice and shit, but he’s my _identical fucking twin_ , so y’know, take that as you fuckin’ will.”

“Should I be taking notes?”

South snorted a laugh. “Probably.”

Unlocking her data-pad, Connie part-seriously, mostly jokingly, began taking notes.

“Okay, Maine. Exactly as fuckin’ tough as they look, they could probably kill a man with one fucking punch if they wanted. Wait, no, actually, they dicking _have_ —I’ve fucking seen it! But y’know, they’re not so bad. Fuckin quiet. Chill. Just don’t piss ‘em off.”

Connie nodded. She knew Maine a little, from those mornings she’d bump into them in the hub and scattered occasions beyond—once, her clippers had stopped working, and they lent her theirs. They were nice.

“York? He’s _constantly_ one wrong move off being one of the fuckers who gets killed with one punch. That cocksocket could talk for the fucking galaxy and win, he has no concept of the words ‘shut the fuck up’ but for the love of dicks, do _not_ interrupt him when he’s working on a lock. No matter how much he fuckin banters. He _will_ lose focus, we _will_ get caught, and we all fucking suffer.”

About half-way through that particular description, Connie started giggling. “Noted.”

“Carolina is a decent fuckin CO, she’d almost be fuckin _cool_ if she wasn’t high speed as all fuck and a real pain in the dick cause of it, but hey, she’s also hot as tits, can absolutely kick my ass and as a big fucking lesbian? Gotta appreciate that. Also: adrenaline junkie. Be-fucking-ware.”

The more she said, the more Connie giggled, all pretence of ‘note taking’ quickly abandoned. “Beware of _what?_ ”

South just winked. “Quickfire round: Wyoming is a fucking Bond villain caricature; do _not_ let him start a joke or he _will_ fucking finish it and you _will_ regret it for the rest of your life. Florida… just don’t talk to Florida; he’s a fucking enigma. And you know Georgia already: they’re like a fucking high school mean girl.”

Giggling turned into full-on laughter and Connie let herself fall sideways onto the mattress, as South’s face lit up with that confident, unashamed grin of hers—clearly proud of her descriptions and the reaction they’d earned.

“That give you a good enough idea what those assfucks are like?”

“I think so,” Connie said through the lingering laughter. “You have quite a way with words.”

“Fuck yeah I do,” South said, still grinning. “Think you’re gonna fit right in, mischief.”

Connie thought so, too.


	4. If You Die in the Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9d5d5e19abed00b0b041f148fee4940c/8a7feec2e9207994-c6/s640x960/e91ef3bd470b30c778ec84d49b4010a6461e38eb.png) by mercysewerpyro/artsilon.

“Hey, new blood, up here.”

Connie looked up from the knife she was sharpening to 479er beckoning her, a hand over her shoulder but her attention firmly on the airspace in front of them. Finishing up, Connie slipped the knife back into the holster on her thigh—locked to her biometric signature—and stepped up into the cockpit.

“We’re ten minutes out. You ready?” Niner said, glancing back for just a second.

“Yeah, I’m all set.” A beat. “‘New blood’?”

“Would you prefer fresh meat?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m either. You’ve flown me before, you know,” Connie said, folding her arms. She flinched, slightly, at the sound of the metal gauntlets scraping against each other.

“Oh, I know. But you didn’t exactly stick around. Besides, you and South were too busy flirting back there for me to get a word in edgeways.” (“We were _not_ —”) “Now, you’re a full-time asshole like the rest of them. Welcome aboard, try not to spill your guts in my bird, if you can help it, and be prepared to get thrown around. I’m here to get you out alive, not without bruises.”

“I’ll do my best,” Connie said. She stood off to the side of the pilot’s chair and looked out over the landscape beneath them.

They’d been in the Oriens system a while, tackling the Insurrectionist activity spread across the local colonies and utilising one of the Project’s main hubs of simulation bases, here on Astraeus. As a moon, it was sparse, minimally populated. Only a UNSC facility dedicated to testing new weapons technology and scattered simulation bases marked the surface.

“So, what’s your speciality?” Niner asked, as the Pelican pitched down and Connie was forced to adjust her stance to stay upright.

“Intelligence and security.”

“Awful lot of knives there for an intelligence and security specialist.”

“Sometimes the best way through security is a knife jammed into a delicate spot,” Connie said, with a shrug.

Niner chuckled. “Appropriately threatening response. You really do fit right in, don’t you? Alright, now: when you have to call in the pilot early, what do you do?”

“Say please and thank them profusely for dragging my ass out of the fire.”

“When they’re flying you out of hell, what do you do?”

“Strap in and do nothing, unless they ask me to.”

“If the pilot says jump, you say?”

“How high?”

Niner smirked. “I like you.”

Seven minutes later, Connie landed on the tightly packed dirt and rock of the moon’s surface. Her helmet automatically dulled the sound of the Pelican’s engines flaring overhead as Niner took off. Her HUD lit up, marking her target a hundred metres ahead, beyond the towering wall that loomed over the bare landscape she stood in.

Outpost 5 – First Hold. A pair of simulation bases isolated within a contained area, encircled by a 20-metre-high wall with no way in or out, except the sky and entrances only accessible to agents or members of command. Dark grey and completely smooth, the walls were about as unnatural a barrier as you could get. It looked like it had just been dropped into place out of nowhere and, for all intents and purposes, it had.

Standing there in the middle of an otherwise deserted sector of the moon, looking up at those walls, the atmosphere was… uncanny.

Of all the simulation bases the Project had sent Connie too, this was by far the weirdest, and she hadn’t even stepped inside yet.

As she began to approach, she pulled out the minimised mission objective on the left side of her HUD, right above the mission clock that ticked up, second by second.

Five days ago, an attack by the Reds had resulted in the injury of two members of the Blue team. Their injuries were severe enough that they had to be evacuated from the base and replacements wouldn’t be available for another week, at least, due to travel times. Connie was tasked with aiding the Blue team in levelling the playing field, by utilising her ‘unique skills’.

Based off the intel the Project had given her about the simulation itself, she already had an idea of how.

Idly, as she scanned her hand on the biometric plate at the north entrance, she wondered how Wash was getting on over at Outpost 12 – Crater’s Edge. He was running against Maine, them on Red Team and him on Blue Team. Most of the squad had bet against him, when the standard pre-simulation bets were gathered, but she’d put her money on Wash. Objectively, Maine had the upper hand based on physical prowess alone, but Wash was easy to underestimate and, with only a month as real members of Alpha under their belt, the others didn’t know better. She, on the other hand, did.

Quickly passing through the double-layered doors—the first closing as quickly as it opened, before the second let her through—she entered the base and that uncanny feeling spiked. The zone itself was ovular, no longer than a quarter mile from end to end, and utterly artificial in every sense. Walkways ran along the sides and intersected the central zone, dented and torn apart in places. Scattered throughout the tangle of paths were self-contained rooms.

It was a maze of metal and technology.

At the root of it sat Outpost 5-A, Blue Base. A utilitarian structure made of metal and concrete, with cameras on every supporting pillar and a set of double doors locked down more heavily than some of the enemy facilities Connie had encountered.

Moving slowly, watching every step to make sure she didn’t trip something or make too much noise, she stepped up to that door and held down the blue button for ten seconds, like the briefing had instructed.

On the eleventh second, a holographic projection appeared in the centre of the door. An up-close shot of a visor, someone pressing their helmet right up to the camera.

Quiet, frenzied chatter was followed by a sharp shushing sound and orders to ‘keep quiet’, and the owner of the visor speaking directly to the camera, “ _Code._ ”

Connie sighed internally, quickly skimming the briefing again. “The rooster bites the hand that feeds it.”

Somehow, she could feel them squinting at her, before the projection blinked off and the panel beside the door lit up green and—

Multiple pairs of hands _grabbed_ her and dragged her through the doors faster than she could so much as open her mouth to speak.

Instincts kicked in and she almost had the one in cobalt’s arm twisted up behind their back hard enough to pop something out of place before she reigned it in. Instead, she shoved them, quickly clearing space between them.

They skittered away, back behind the line of four other soldiers suited in varying shades of blue and one in yellow.

“Okay, first things first? Do _not_ manhandle me,” she snapped, the uniquely painful sensation of unwanted but harmless touch radiating from the spots where fingertips had dug into her arms. Thankfully, most of their hands had grasped armour. “I am here to help you and I will. You do not need to _grab_ me.”

“You shouldn’t stay outside too long or they could _see_ you,” said the one in basic blue, who her HUD told her was Private Miserbles.

“I’m perfectly capable of not being seen on my own, private. I was sent to help you for a reason,” Connie said. Scanning along the line of soldiers, basic profiles—name, age, rank, the usual—popped up above each of their heads. Cobalt (who she now also noted was wearing a… tinfoil hat, over her helmet) was Private Dinko, the one in pale blue was Private Keck, and… “Private… Bytheway? Is that pronounced Bythe-way or by-the-way?”

“Yes,” said the one in teal. Connie paused, waiting for a better answer, but after a moment it was clear she wasn’t getting one and so she moved on.

“Alright, Sergeant—”

“Kass,” said the yellow armoured woman, popping her helmet up just far enough for her to get the neck of a flask to her lips and take a swig. “Just call me Kass.” Her helmet fell back to rest on her chin until she pushed it back into place.

“…Kass, alright. Kass, where’s your main control room?”

Kass gestured down the hall with a slosh of whatever alcohol was in that flask, stepping backwards. “Uh— yeah, this way. Mind the shit piled up.”

Carefully tiptoeing around what seemed to be a heap of discarded monitors, system cases and assorted computer parts, she followed Kass down the hall. Kass was much less cautious, plastic and wires crunching under her boots. Connie flinched, stepping over the cracked pieces Kass left in her wake.

Kass scanned her hand and the door lifted. “Here you go. Knock yourself out.”

Stepping inside, it quickly became obvious where the junk and parts had come from. Server racks and terminals lined the walls of the room, but there were gaps scattered around where things had been removed and, apparently, thrown into the hallway.

“Why are—?”

“They were _compromised_ ,” Dinko said. Connie almost jumped out of her skin as she reappeared out of nowhere. “We had to get rid of them. Or the Reds would have control over our base in like— like a week, tops.”

“Right, and… how did you _know_ that they were compromised?”

Dinko scoffed. “Because the lights on them started flashing red. _Obviously_!”

Kass’ helmet popped up at the exact same moment that Connie felt a little part of herself wither, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. This was going to be… an _interesting_ , simulation.

“Right. Right. Obviously,” she said, thankful as ever for the discretion provided by her helmet. She was going to need that. She was going to _really_ need that. “Alright, let me take a look at what you’ve got here.”

Simulation troopers were almost always a little… eccentric, Connie had found. Rosters built of soldiers hastily handed over by their commanding officers tended towards the unconventional and whilst a number of the troopers were volunteers, the pool of people who would willingly sign up to be take part in an experiment such as this… well, the Venn diagram was almost a circle.

It certainly made for unique simulations. Unpredictability was a better trainer than routine, she supposed.

Taking a seat at the primary terminal, she entered the passcode she’d received and was relieved to find that they did, at least, keep regular notes and even had something resembling a proper organisational system. Private Bytheway appeared over her shoulder just to tell her:

“By the way,” it was all Connie could do not to groan, “that’s my doing. The rest of them couldn’t put their own names in the right order, let alone a play-by-play of what we do!”

And it was certainly a play-by-play. Every minute of every day was accounted for in those notes. Every single minute.

“It’s certainly thorough.” A little too thorough. It recorded everything the other troopers in the base did, as well as Bytheway’s thoughts and a variety of theories about what even the littlest, most innocuous things meant. “When exactly did the latest attack take place?”

“21-02-48 at 1802 hours.”

“Thank you.”

Finding it was easy enough, but the notes really were almost too detailed to be of use. Key events were interspersed with minor observations and minute details about the discharge of weapons, who moved where, everything everyone said, and more.

“Uh…”

“The Reds had made a move on one of the weapons stashes in the centre like, a few days before,” Kass said, her armour scraping against the concrete of the wall beside the terminal as she leaned against it. The rim of her helmet balanced on the tip of her nose and she took another swig of her flask, wiping her lips. “Took a bunch of shit. Attacked us when we weren’t expecting it. Managed to override the crazy security measures somehow and shot the two guarding the flag. Simple as.”

“Put your helmet back on!” Keck hissed, waving his arms about haphazardly and nearly hitting Miserbles in the faceplate. Kass rolled her eyes so hard her whole head rolled with them and proceeded to make a big display of pushing her helmet further up her nose and taking another swig. “You keep doing that and we’ll have _another_ attack on our hands!”

Kass didn’t acknowledge the comment, continuing to address Connie. “I told them what would happen, but they don’t listen.”

“Right… which weapons stash? Could you point it out on a map of the base?”

Sighing, Kass pushed up from the wall and leaned over Connie’s shoulder as she pulled up the map. Jabbing a finger against the screen, she pointed out one of the standalone buildings about half-way down the left side of the wall. “That one.”

“Which makes that one empty… alright, we can work with this,” Connie said, mentally cataloguing the locations of the stashes and the pathways to the other base. Glancing at the mission clock, she continued, “Give me a couple hours, at most, and I can have us into another stash and the Reds’ base.”

“There’s a bunch of traps between here and there, y’know.”

“Do you have a vague idea of what and where they are?”

“I do!” Dinko piped up. “I’ve been watching them, on the cameras. I’m _trying_ to get proof that they’re installing transmitters to read our minds,” the tinfoil wrapped around her helmet suddenly made a little more sense, “but I just keep seeing them setting traps.”

Connie, already mentally bracing herself for a long day, beckoned her over. “Okay, come and tell me what you know, and I’ll get to work.”

Dinko did, to her credit, have a good memory for what she’d seen; whilst Connie doubted it would be entirely accurate, combining that with the feed from the cameras themselves, she was able to construct a relatively detailed map of the likely traps and a way around them.

From there, she could get to work on the infiltration itself.

First Hold was, at its core, an infiltration specialist’s playground. That maze of technology and metal was designed specifically for these scenarios, with security, encryptions and networks built to challenge even the most experienced of agents. Still, Connie figured it couldn’t be anywhere near as tough as they thought it was. She knew the Project’s encryption protocols like the back of her hand; she could break through most of their baseline security measures in her sleep. Even with new variables in play…

Well, apparently the security there wasn’t _entirely_ beyond the stubborn will of a few simulation troopers. So, she figured she’d be alright.

Connie wasn’t sure if the troopers here were all like… this, _before_ they were placed in the simulation, or if the simulation had resulted in some unexpected psychological side effects. She made a note to report that, later; this base may need more than a helping hand from a Freelancer.

“What are you doing now?” Keck asked, after a few minutes, hovering right over her shoulder as she broke through the first layer of protection and gained access to the Reds’ network remotely. “Hey, hey, what’re you doing?”

Her shoulders drew in and tightened. “Accessing the Reds’ systems so I can crack their security.”

“ _Wirelessly?_ ”

“Remotely, yes.”

“That’ll let _them_ in!” Keck said, grabbing her shoulder plate and shaking her slightly.

“If I didn’t know what I was _doing_ ,” she shook his hand off and, mimicking a trick she’d seen Carolina use on York the week before, tilted her head forward to cast a shadow over her eyes in a makeshift helmet-clad glare, “then maybe, but I do know what I’m doing.”

Keck huffed, but backed off. About a foot.

Sighing, Connie continued working.

There was no remote access to the external locks, but the same couldn’t be said for their non-physical defences; their cameras were only encrypted at the baseline level used on standard command files, which she accessed regularly. A few small adjustments for the specific encryption later and she had access to the live feeds inside and outside their base.

Most of the internal cameras were taped over or sprayed with paint—just as paranoid as the Blues, she supposed—but the external view was clear. From there, it was easy enough to isolate part of the recordings and set up a loop on each camera, concealing any movement within the walls on the Reds’ end whilst letting her keep the real feed running in the corner of her HUD.

“Alright, I’ve set up a loop that will mask our approach when we make our move,” she said, watching it closely to make sure there were no tells. Nope, it looked smooth. “Now it’s just a matter of figuring out exactly what we’re dealing with over there and shutting down any extra security systems that I do have remote access to.”

Dinko sprung up behind her and Connie all but jumped out of her skin again. “How’re you going to do that?”

Taking a deep breath, fingertip picking at the rough material of the kevlar covering her palm, Connie said, “By breaking through their internal protections to find maintenance logs, blueprints, stuff like that. That’ll show me what they have set up.”

“And how’re you gonna do _that?_ ” Dinko said, practically breathing down her neck. Infinitely grateful for that kevlar layer, Connie took another deep breath.

This was the problem with simulation runs. Sim troopers were a lot more curious than members of an actual team.

“Well, the Red base’s data encryption seems to be done through a 128 bit key—actually quite a bit lower than advised, these days, but it’s strong enough for most of the Project’s lowest level files—so,” Connie said, watching the friendly signal on her radar already starting to jitter in place as Dinko stepped back and forth, “what I have to do, after I get through their top layers of protection to _find_ those files, is to—”

Dinko was already slinking away.

Connie muted her helmet as she laughed under her breath. Weaponised info-dumping. Hopefully, that would keep the rest of them at bay, too.

It was child’s play to find her way deeper into the system and isolate the files she needed, utilising her infiltration suite to build a spoofed profile that had permission to access the database and dramatically reducing the time needed to decrypt the files once she’d retrieved them. Once she’d pulled those files over onto the Blues’ system—again having to assuage Keck’s paranoia about retaliatory action—it was just a matter of waiting for her programs to run their course.

The Red roster decrypted first, confirming they still had seven active troopers and all of their basic roles within the base. Next was their latest maintenance logs, which told her that their biometric scanners had been faulty for a while and were currently disabled—one less layer of security to have to trick. Another showed they had disabled one of the base’s main forms of offensive security, an electrified entry point, after repeated incidents of one of the Privates forgetting the codes and getting zapped.

Whilst she was waiting for the blueprints and other records to decrypt, she took a glance around the room. Miserbles was flitting in and out of the room at a quite frankly ridiculous pace. Keck was pacing back and forth in a semi-circle behind her, his footsteps so repetitive they’d faded into background noises. Dinko sat on the floor, rocking from side to side—bored out of her mind. Bytheway had sat at another terminal and was typing, probably updating the logs with the day’s events.

“I know exactly how this is going to go, y’know.” Kass’ flask was noticeably lighter, as she lifted it and took another swig. There was a red line in the skin of her nose where the helmet’s rim had rubbed it. “We’ll get the weapons, get into the Red base, one of the others—” her helmet fell lopsided with a momentary twitch of her head towards Keck, “—will get a bit too zealous with their new guns, and two of the Reds will die.”

Connie’s brow furrowed. “No one’s going to die, Kass. That’s not the point of this. We just have to get their flag.”

“And to get to their flag, we have to get through them,” Kass said, very matter-of-factly. “So, two of them are going to die.”

Tensing up, Connie’s response was perhaps a little sharper than she’d intended it to be, “It _won’t_ come to that, Sergeant. No one has to die, that isn’t the point.”

“What kinda war is it if no one dies?”

That should have been her second clue that something was wrong, there, after the strange behaviour of the simulation troopers that surrounded her. Instead, ever conscious of the time and the watching eye of the Project, she filed it away as something else to report later and got back to work.

It wasn’t long after that she had everything she needed. Blueprints of the Red base showed her every security measure installed and by checking that against the maintenance logs, she was able to verify multiple other damaged or disabled features. What remained was more than enough to stop another set of sim troopers—the complex door locks, alone, would be almost impossible for anyone without experience to crack—but not enough to stop an experienced infiltrator.

Kass, her helmet finally pulled back down and her flask mag-locked to her hip, sighed when Connie told her she was ready. Reluctant acceptance in every word and motion, she ordered her troopers to gear up and, after a few minutes of subsequent chaos, they were as ready as they’d ever be.

The Reds’ logs also included documentation of the traps they’d set. Getting through the maze of walkways to the closest stash was simple enough with that intel on hand and Connie was unsurprised to find the lock was an easy crack. Locks weren’t exactly her specialty, but she had the tools she needed and in less than a minute the Blues were flooding the room, picking up weapons.

It was only then that she realised they hadn’t been armed at all, before.

“How long have you guys been here?” she asked, watching as Keck weighed a rifle in his hands.

“Almost a year,” Kass said, taking nothing but a pistol that she clipped onto her free hip.

“What’s the score?”

“First breach of another base was last week. Y’know, the whole reason you’re here.”

Connie frowned. The more she heard, the less sense it all made.

But the mission clock kept ticking away and there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. It all just got added to a list of questions and notable details to report to command upon her return; maybe even into a recommendation that the base was shut down, for the sake of the troopers stuck here.

Isolation did funny things to people. She thought they’d have considered that variable.

Crossing the remaining distance to the Red base was uneventful, besides Kass having to shush the others no less than five times. Connie kept an eye on the dual feed she’d embedded in the bottom corner of her HUD the entire time. The loop never so much as flickered, stable and blocking their approach from any prying eyes. The way to give away their position would be excessive noise.

For once, though, they seemed to listen to Kass. By the time Connie was in front of the security panel at the side door, they’d quietened down entirely.

“The layout will be almost exactly like your base,” she said, as she worked through layers of security one by one. “All you have to do is get through and get the flag from the back, then run like hell for the base. Dinko, you probably know the way past the traps best, so I’d say you take it if you can.”

“Got it!” Dinko said, in an exaggerated whisper-yell.

“Distracting the others should be simple enough. You may have less soldiers, but you do have me.” Finally, she bypassed the last of the security and the lights on the door lit up in waves as the door opened.

No alarms triggered. The hallway ahead of them was empty and this entrance was the closest to the flag chamber; from there it was a clear shot to the flag and back. Kass beckoned Dinko ahead and they all followed behind her, prepared for interception. Connie hung back at the rear. Her primary role accomplished, the rest laid on the shoulders of the troopers themselves.

By all sense and reason, it should have been simple, even for them.

But less than a minute later, a door opened, and a voice yelled, “BLUES! IN OUR BASE!” and just like that, all hell broke loose.

The sharp thunk of opening doors, the rapid pops of gunfire, the startled yelling as the Blues scrambled and returned fire all at once. The halls in the base were narrow and Connie barely ducked in time to dodge a bullet to the skull, skidding along the floor and right into a pair of maroon legs. Cursing under her breath, she scrambled to her feet as the trooper toppled over, instinctively grabbing for her knife as another stream of bullets rained down the hall and, steadying herself just enough to note both the bright red armour ahead of her and the open door to her left, her eyes flicked over to her unit.

A holographic duplicate of her stood in the hall as she _fell_ , more than jumped, through the door and slammed an elbow into the lock.

Nausea flowed over her in heavy waves, her head _spinning_ —each burst of a bullet sending it ricocheting off in another direction, around and around and around with every bang and yell and the distant sound of a scream of pain and— and—

The smell of iron, intense and burning in her nose.

In her helmet? Was she bleeding?

Shit, was she hit?

Warnings blared in her helmet, loud and piercing and burying their way deep into her skull and making her want to _tear it off_ , but she didn’t, she didn’t. Breathed deeply, lay on her back, willed her head to clear even as the sound of yelling spiked outside the door.

Her eyes focused again. First on the dark concrete ceiling above her, then on the bright red warning smeared across her HUD:

<WARNING: UNSAFE UNIT USE DETECTED.>

Groaning, Connie muttered a quiet, “No shit,” as she dismissed the warning and pulled up her BIOCOM. No injuries.

Alright, that was something.

Now what the hell was—

The door behind her opened and Connie rolled onto her front in the very same second, rearing her arm back to throw her knife past any potential assailants’ head—only to see yellow.

Kass beckoned her up. “C’mon, Freelancer, Dinko got the flag.”

Hit by a renewed wave of nausea, Connie took a long moment to process the words before she nodded—another action she immediately regretted. Taking the hand Kass offered, she dragged herself to her feet and stepped into the hall.

There was a faint splashing sound. She didn’t need to look down to know what that meant.

Kass’ head rolled with her eyes again as she stepped over a red-clad corpse. “I told you what would happen.”

Brow furrowed and her head still spinning, Connie stepped over the body and followed her.

It wasn’t until she was sitting in the back of the Pelican, wiping dried blood from under her nose, that she realised she’d never heard of sim troopers dying during simulations before.

“Excellent work, Agent Connecticut. You not only completed the simulation in record time, but also succeeded in evening the teams and their scores in one strike. Well done,” the Director said, swiping something on the holographic projection table that stood between them.

“Thank you, sir,” Connie said, standing ramrod straight with her fingernails dug into the kevlar covering her palm. Movement on the large leaderboard behind him drew her eye at the same time that her band beeped, a flash of red as three names were highlighted in red and reorganised.

It was the first time her position had changed since the board had been established and, for a moment, there was a swell of satisfaction in her chest, despite her better judgement. Agent Maine and Agent North Dakota were each bumped down a spot as her own name rose into place at number 5.

Only to flash red again, matched by another sharp beep of her band and the Director’s heavy voice dragging out a, “However…”

Her position settled, instead, at number 6.

“…you also utilised your experimental armour unit without prior approval or a hard-line back to command. This is most disappointing behaviour, Connecticut. I expect better of you in the future.”

Biting back a retort, she nodded. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

“Indeed, it won’t.” Whatever eyes resided behind those reflective lenses bore into her and they stood at a standstill, the illusion of eye contact enough to drive discomfort deep into her chest. “Dismissed, Agent.”

“If I may, sir, before I go—” the Director turned back, slowly, where he had begun to turn away, “—did those Red simulation troopers… actually _die?_ Or was that a part of the simulation?”

“It was a part of the simulation, yes, _however_ ,” the sigh of relief caught at the back of Connie’s throat and died, a second later, as the Director continued, “the two Red team Privates did indeed die as a result of their injuries. Their families will be informed.”

“But sir—” Connie said, dropping out of appropriate stance. “These simulations are only meant to be _simulations_ , not real battles. Those troopers are—”

“Those troopers are aware of the dangers to which they are submitting themselves, Agent Connecticut,” the Director said, leaning in an inch. “They are a _darn_ sight less likely to die in our controlled simulations than on the front lines. They agreed to the conditions of the simulations for sake of the _war_.”

“Sir—”

“They _understand_ that they are playing a valuable part in Project Freelancer’s work, as important a part as any of you, and they have accepted the risks for the benefit of our cause. I’m sure that you can understand such a willingness to put yourself in harm’s way for something important, Agent Connecticut.” There was a pointed bite to the words and the weight of his shielded eyes grew heavier, his lips pressing into that tight line of annoyance. “ _Dismissed._ ”

“Yes, sir. Understood, sir.”

She knew better than to push her luck a second time.

When, hours later, she finally remembered to clear out her band’s alerts, she couldn’t help but notice that both position switches had sent her an individual notification. The two beeps from the bridge. Right.

 _Well_ , she thought, brow furrowed, _that’s certainly one way to make a point._

Over the course of the next couple of days, Connie tried her best not to think about what had happened down at First Hold. About the dead simulation troopers whose blood was—if not literally, then metaphorically—on her hands, and the unstable mental state of those still living there.

There was a drafted version of her report on the incident that went into her concerns, but it sat unsent on her data-pad alongside an alternate, trimmed version. It was due by the end of the week. She still wasn’t sure which version she was going to submit.

“—and then the dickfucker has the nerve to say I wasn’t _quick_ enough!” South said, throwing her arms up. “Like, fuck you, bitchstick, I killed the fucking target, no one saw me. What more do you fucking want, huh? I swear, if he’d fucking bumped me down for that I woulda…” A beat. “Hey, mischief, you listening over there?”

Connie’s head shot up. “What? Oh, uh, yeah. North’s a real idiot.”

“Mischief,” South said, blinking at her pointedly. “I stopped complaining about North’s latest stupid decision like, ten fucking minutes ago. I even got through my deus-ex-Carolina rant. Are you awake? Did you just pass out with your fuckin’ eyes open?”

Dropping her head back against the corner of the rec room sofa, Connie sighed. Her data-pad sat resting against her thighs, the draft of her report filling the screen. “I’m awake,” she said, nudging South in the thigh with her foot. South’s response was to shift her butt closer and sit on her feet. “Just… got distracted, sorry.”

“What could possibly be more entertaining than me, huh?” South said, winking and jabbing her with her elbow. Connie couldn’t help but smile.

“Nothing,” she said, “it’s actually the opposite. I’m staring down my report on my last simulation.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” South said, throwing her head back dramatically, “ _paperwork_.”

Connie giggled. “Not the best part of our jobs, huh?”

“Sometimes, I make North do mine. Used to do each other’s work all the fuckin’ time back at home. Teachers were too fuckin’ dumb to notice.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

South flashed one of her signature grins and leaned back, her arms folded behind her head. “Maybe I could make him do yours by passing it off as mine.”

“As hilarious—” (“Oh, I’m dead fuckin’ serious.”) “—as that would be, it’s almost done. Or, well…”

Rather, it _was_ done. Twice over.

She just didn’t know if she was overreacting.

It had seemed so cut and dry, in the immediate aftermath. Something was wrong at First Hold and people had died because of it. Except the Director’s response made it sound so much more… commonplace, than she’d thought it to be. The way he talked, it implied that deaths of simulation troopers was a fairly regular occurrence that she’d simply managed to avoid an encounter with until now.

There was a question caught on the tip of her tongue. _Am I the only one who is bothered by this?_

Yet, looking over at South, the question fell loose and died. Did she want to know the answer?

South raised a brow at her and Connie quickly stopped herself staring. “Well what? You okay, Connie?”

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to shake off the hesitation, “it’s just—”

York’s head appeared between them.

“Whoa—!”

“Hey ladies—” (“Not a lady.”) “—sorry, hey you two, what’re you up to today?” he said, leaning his entire weight over the back of the sofa.

South groaned, grabbing his face—smushing his cheek—and shoving his head away. “Trying to enjoy our five total fucking seconds of peace without an assmunch with badly gelled hair disturbing us.”

“Ouch, you hurt me,” York said, muffled slightly by his partially smooshed mouth. Pulling his head free, he leaned yet _further_ over the back of the seat, threatening to permanently deform the cushions. “But seriously, you gonna be here for the movie night?”

South rolled her eyes so hard her head rolled with them. “No, we're gonna skip the one fucking regular night that we actually get to truly fucking relax. _Obviously_. Seriously, what kinda question, York?”

“The kinda question that lets me dump the duty for bargaining with Niner for that booze on you.”

“ _Мудак._ ”

“Ooh, brought out the Russian,” York, as usual, sounded much too proud of himself for his annoyance-based achievement as he finally hopped down from the back of the sofa.

“Я собираюсь убить тебя во сне,” South said, her expression completely neutral. _I’m going to kill you in your sleep_ , she’d said—if Connie’s Russian wasn’t as rusty as she thought it was. Connie’s eyes widened and, trying her best to muffle a laugh, she looked at York.

York just winked, flicking her a mock two-fingered salute. “Buy me dinner first.”

“Ew, yuck. Even if I was into dudes, I’d have better fucking taste than you, dickhole.”

“And that is _exactly_ why I’m passing the begging onto you. You and Niner had that,” he vaguely waved a hand, “thing.”

South raised a brow at him. “ _Thing_.”

“Yeah, that thing where you two made the whole damn bird shake on its landing gear like a bucking bull. Anyway, you two had a thing, so _you_ have a better shot at getting it for cheap than I do.”

“…you pissed Niner off on your drop today, didn’t you.”

There was a beat of silence. South set York with a look that could probably kill a lesser man and he stared back, mouth half-open with an unspoken retort and his finger raised like an idiot. It was still raised when, finally, he continued, “ _Look_ , just go sweet talk her and get us our booze for tonight, okay?”

“ _Подонок._ ”

“Is that a yes, or a yes?”

“Ugh, _yes_ , fine,” York did a dorky little fist-pump, “now fuck off before I change my mind.”

“Oh, I hear ya. See you later, girls!” he said, finger-gunning as he backed out of the door.

“Still not a girl!” Connie called.

“See you later, fellow agents!”

“Better!”

“He’s a fucking idiot,” South said, sliding down in her seat until her back was almost parallel with the cushion previously beneath her ass. “So. What the fuck were you saying before he decided to pop up like an inconvenient boner?”

“…I hate that. But most of all, I hate that it makes sense.”

South grinned.

“But— I was just going to say it’s…” Hesitating, just for a second, Connie shook her head, “boring. I’ll get it done, but it’s _so_ boring. I wish I could spend this time on my actual work.”

“Hey, like I said, offer’s open to make North do it.”

“I’ll think about it, thank you,” Connie said, nudging her in the side of the head with her foot. “Now, don’t you have some flirting to go and do?”

South groaned, throwing an arm over her face. “Flirting is so much more fun when it’s _not_ trying to convince the woman responsible for dragging your ass out of the fire to give you a discount on her smuggled fucking booze.”

“Surely it can’t be _that_ difficult for you to pull it off.”

“Why?” South pulled her arm half-away, revealing a single blue eye tinted by with mischief. “Think I’m that hot, huh?”

Connie felt a wave of heat rise to her cheeks and, in the same moment, threw the ratty pillow from under her over South’s face.

South dissolved into laughter.

She lingered for another few minutes before hopping to her feet with a mock ‘duty calls!’. Connie giggled and watched her go, wishing her luck—

And deflating, the second she left the room.

Frowning, she looked at the two files on her data-pad. With a sigh, she closed them both and pulled herself up to her feet. She’d decide later. She couldn’t be late for her next slot.

When South marched into the rec room that evening, it was while wielding a large case of beer triumphantly above her head and sporting a colourful patch of bruises on her neck that told everyone all they needed to know about her methods. Dropping the case directly on York’s lap and popping out two cans, she dropped down into the seat Connie had saved her—though not without almost kneeing Wash, sat at her feet, directly in the nose.

Offering one can to Connie, she sunk back in the chair. “Guess I really am that hot.”

“Guess you are,” Connie said, though she shook her head at the offered beer. “Not really a beer person. I like my regret with fruity flavouring.”

“Suit yourself, more for me,” South said, popping the seal.

York was already dishing out the rest to whoever wanted it, whilst Wyoming—a face Connie was always surprised to see at these things—was rummaging through one of the rec room cupboards. He emerged after a few moments of noisy reorganisation with a bottle of Bourbon. That was, at least, very on brand.

“There might be something fruity back there, but beware,” South said, nodding towards the cupboard, “most of what’s shoved in there tastes like rubbing alcohol and hits like it too, or it’s hidden behind half-eaten bags of commissary snacks.”

Connie’s nose scrunched in thought, then she clambered over the back of the sofa and up onto the counter to dig through the cupboards. She hopped back into her seat a minute later with a glass of something pink and fruity looking, somehow managing to not spill a single drop.

“Better?” South said, grinning.

“Better,” Connie said, taking a sip. Maybe it would help subdue the stubborn uneasiness still settled in her chest and let her actually enjoy the evening.

“Why did you have to go bargain for the beer at all when there’s alcohol hidden in here already?” Wash asked, dropping his head back over Connie’s thigh.

“Because sometimes, rookie,” South said, gesturing with the can hard enough to send a drop flying out to land on his face, “you just really want to sit down, chill out and drink some shitty beer. When I’m in the mood to forget my name, _then_ I’ll break out the shit that tastes like it can blind you.”

“Pretty sure it did once, actually,” York chimed in from across the room where he lay slumped against North’s side, sprawled out in a frankly comical arrangement of limbs.

“No, York, you just passed out with a fucking blindfold on.”

“Now _that_ sounds like a story,” Wash said. Maine ducked through the door a second later, the last of the group expected to arrive, and he beckoned them over. “Hey, big guy!”

York’s jaw all but dropped when, without so much as a grunt, Maine joined Wash sat at the foot of the sofa. Carolina reached over from her adjacent seat to push his mouth closed.

“Careful, you’ll catch flies.”

“What flies? We’re in space!”

“Space flies,” Carolina said, completely deadpan. “Much worse than normal flies.”

York squinted. “I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or not.”

Smirking, Carolina snatched the beer out of his hand and sat back into her seat. York only pouted.

“Oh, it’s a fucking story alright.” South chugged the rest of her first can and crushed it, tossing it perfectly into a trash chute across the room. “See, the little fuckass—”

Connie sat back into the corner of the sofa, her knees pulled up to her chest and cradling her glass of mixed fruit flavoured gin in her lap. South was one hell of a storyteller and she laughed along with everyone else as she told the tale of a drunken game of hide-and-seek gone wrong—a story some of them knew, some of them didn’t, and some of them had forgotten with the rest of that night.

Yet she never really… relaxed. Even as the drink started to settle in, she couldn’t will her muscles to release nor her thoughts to stop turning over. The unasked, unanswered question coming back time and time again, like a broken record in the back of her mind:

_Am I the only one who is bothered by this?_

Amidst the laughter, the chatter, the playful jeers and dramatic groans—the answer seemed clearer than ever.

Maybe she really was overreacting. People really would do anything for the war, after all.

When she got back to the room that night, a little bit buzzed and more than a little bit drained, she sent off the trimmed report and went to bed, before she could change her mind.

After that, it was… easier, to put the thought of First Hold aside—perhaps too easy. Project Freelancer didn’t slow down for anything and Connie was thrown headfirst into another pile of Insurrectionist intel by the end of the week. Evidence to support the theory that the local Innies had managed to reinstate interplanetary and intersystem communications between cells was building with every drop, as was her workload.

More than anything, she didn’t have the _time_ to be distracted.

Nothing made that clearer than the summons to the bridge that Alpha Squad received towards the end of the month.

“Full uniform…” Wash mused, when the alert came in mid-training as they often did, “not even full armour, _uniform_. This must be something big.”

“It better be, to make me wear that thing,” Connie said, dismissing her own alert and reloading her pistol. “That uniform was _not_ made to order, it’s like wearing a sports bra three sizes too small.”

“I’d call that too much information,” Wash said, “but one, with communal showers, that concept really goes out the window, and two, I remember _exactly_ the kind of compression you’re describing.”

“Binder problems?”

“You know it.”

“Anyway, tit related problems aside…” she said. Wash chuckled. “I made a breakthrough the other day. I found encrypted messages in the data our old squadmates in Beta brought back that prove they’ve been communicating between systems.”

“Huh.” Wash reset his target and checked his ammo count. “So, they’ve set up some means of interplanetary transmission?”

“Apparently,” Connie said, squaring up with her lane. “Or, more likely, managed to hijack UNSC transmitters without anyone noticing.”

“Until now,” Wash said.

Connie nodded. “Until now.”

Seeing everyone in the sleek black and grey uniforms of Project Freelancer, impersonal and almost… sterile, even in comparison to the official dress uniforms of the UNSC itself, was a rare and somewhat disorienting affair. In armour and out of it, the agents of Project Freelancer were as colourful as their personalities and to see them in muted tones certainly set the tone to ‘serious’.

The Director stood at the peak of the bridge, cast in the blue light of the screens, as Connie stepped up to the holographic table alongside the other agents. Faintly, she could hear him talking—seemingly to himself—before the screens dimmed and he turned towards them, into the relative shadows.

Ten backs straightened at once.

“Agents,” the Director said, stepping into position—a silhouette in front of the domineering light of the leaderboard, “you have been called here today to discuss the next stage in Project Freelancer’s efforts to combat the ongoing Insurrectionist threat and your newest assignment.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Connie saw Wash’s head turn slightly in her direction.

The Director coughed. All eyes snapped dead ahead.

“Recently gathered intelligence has confirmed the existence of a new network of communication between United Front cells operating on numerous colonies. As of yet it is unclear exactly how they were able to re-establish disrupted channels of communication, or how extensive they have become, _however_ ,” the Director said, “what is clear is that they are using these channels to coordinate attacks on important UNSC infrastructure, dangerously close to at-risk territories. Project Freelancer has been assigned the duty of eradicating these _miscreants_.”

Holographic projections of the star system the _Mother of Invention_ currently occupied leapt up from the table, geo-markers mapping out the locations of interest across the string of colonies interspersed with annotations.

“This assignment will be the central focus of Project Freelancer’s operations for the foreseeable future. It shall act as the perfect testing bed for the experimental technology that we have developed and that has been granted to us by the UNSC. _However_ ,” his shielded eyes traced the line of faces in front of him, “make no mistake, unauthorised use of equipment in the field is still a punishable offence. Our technology is valuable. We are testing it out here, in the rear avenues of the war, for a _reason._ You will not risk damaging it by using it without the proper conditions. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir!” said ten voices all at once, barely milliseconds out of sync.

There was a beat of silence. Connie felt the sharp gaze of the Director bore into her as it passed by.

Then, apparently satisfied, he continued.

“As our top squad, Alpha will be running point on this operation,” he said, nodding at them. “Agent Carolina will continue to lead you in the field and here on the _Invention_ ; everything goes through her, first and foremost _._ Agent Connecticut,” Connie stood a little straighter, “will continue her work with the intelligence that either you, or the agents of Beta squad, acquire. You will all make sure that she has all of the information she needs to point us towards the next target.”

Connie swallowed and nodded, as eyes turned to her.

“Each of you will have a role to play.” On the last syllable of the sentence, everyone’s comm. bands beeped in piercing unison—Connie wasn’t the only person to flinch, at the sound. “Individual briefings have been sent to your communications devices. Take the time to read them and then we shall discuss our initial course of action.”

Her briefing said exactly what Connie expected. Her top priority was tracing the origin of their communications through the digital trail of correspondence left behind and any other vital information uncovered along the way was to be passed on so that it could be acted upon. The data she and the ‘supporting team of intelligence agents’—otherwise known as Mass, and occasionally York—decrypted would be key in pointing them in the right direction.

Closing the briefing, she stood back at attention. Heads popped up one by one as people finished reading. A scowl flashed across South’s face for the briefest of moments before she composed herself, though the line of her jaw remained tight.

“Agent Carolina,” the Director said, once everyone’s attention was back on him.

Carolina nodded and stepped around the end of the table, reaching out to highlight and zoom in on one of the geo-markers. “Alright. _This_ —” she pointed at the marker, “—is our next target. Gamma squad will be scouting ahead of time and we’ll be coordinating with Beta on the strike. We’ll be in two teams, team A—”

They’d be making their move in two days and, as far as Connie could tell, it would be a simple enough mission. The objective was to flush out the Insurrectionists hiding out in an old mining facility and to gather more intelligence that would point them towards their communications channels. The facility was larger than average, but nothing they couldn’t handle. All in all, a standard mission and the ignition point of their renewed assault on the United Front’s lingering forces.

Dismissed to return to the rest of their daily duties, Connie immediately veered towards a now unashamedly annoyed-looking South. Without needing to be prompted, she started complaining about how she was pinned under ‘stealth operations’ in her briefing—she was tired of them already, she’d made that clear to Connie over the course of the past few drops. It wasn’t her _thing_.

South didn’t need solutions, she just needed to rant, and Connie listened. Hovered by her side as they walked to the locker room, though they were both due at a training session in less than ten minutes.

And she truly _was_ listening, but as they passed by one of the mission boards, her eye was drawn by the familiar pale blue armour of one of the triplets. There was a bright pink stripe on their arm.

Ohio.

She stood at the base of one of the mission boards, freshly updated with new assignments to reflect the briefing that had just ended. The miniature leaderboard in the corner scrolled slowly through the forty-nine names until it reached the bottom, where the triplets still sat, unmoved.

The Delta Squad section of the board was empty.

Fists clenching and her shoulders threatening to start shaking, Ohio stormed away to the sound of an incessantly beeping comm. band.

Connie’s own echoed it.

Frowning, she realised she simply didn’t have time to follow.


	5. Relativity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter by artsilon/mercysewerpyo](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9fad574b65ee03bee47d2a4a7ad33926/b1d8ab8fa1d8f159-f0/s640x960/d503d7dd494d652b276e8a21d51226f7d76029fd.png)

“Carolina, York, and Maine have reached the central chamber.”

“About time. What took them so long?”

“Small group of Innies with a forklift.”

There was a beat of silence as Wash processed the words, before slowly turning to look at her over his shoulder. “A _forklift?_ Like, they were using the forklift as a weapon?”

“You have to give them points for creativity,” Connie said, setting yet another collection of files to transfer onto the drive she’d inserted into the terminal. “They blocked the hall _and_ stood a chance at causing bodily harm.”

“I’m not sure we should be giving them any points at all, Connie.”

“Hey, credit where credit’s due.”

Wash shrugged, turning back to the door behind them that he was guarding. After a moment, he said, “You know, I’m actually surprised York didn’t take the forklift.”

Connie muffled a giggle and shook her head.

The terminal screen she was focused on was framed by an array of security feeds from different areas of the compound—if it could be called that, being one of the more makeshift Insurrectionist bases they’d encountered, built within an old warehouse district. From here, you could see every movement made in every nook and cranny of the building, give or take a cranny or two. A serious disadvantage, in the hands of the enemy, or a welcome bonus, in the hands of the team.

With the two guards monitoring the screens currently somewhere between unconscious and dead on the floor, things were firmly in their favour—in that area, at least.

“Take it they have something useful?”

“It’s hard to tell for sure until I get it back to the _Invention_ , you know that, but I’m pulling everything I can. No stone left unturned and all that,” Connie said, initiating yet another transfer. “These bases just happen to have a lot of stones laying about.”

“You think they’d have come up with a better failsafe by now,” Wash said. “You know, all things considered.”

“ _Washington_ ,” Connie said with what was only half-mock horror, “you go and find something wood to knock on _right now._ ”

“What?” Wash’s voice rose an octave. “ _Why_?”

“Because if you don’t, and you just jinxed me,” she said, setting him with a look that could pierce both visor and armour, “I’m going to kick your ass the next time we’re in a training room together.”

“You generally kick my ass anyway,” he said, even as he started frantically scanning the room for something wood. “There isn’t anything wood in here!”

“Keep looking.”

Wash groaned. Connie shook her head.

Back on the screens, the trio of Carolina, York, and Maine were in the process of clearing the main chamber of hostiles with the brutal efficiency expected of the top squad. Anyone not stupid enough to fight was quickly subdued and those who were… well, their fates were more varied, and Connie tried not to think about that too hard. As Maine blocked an incoming punch hard enough to break something in the other guy’s arm, she flinched and looked away.

“You know,” she said, not having to look back to know that Wash was still at least half-heartedly looking for something wooden to touch, “York is _still_ trying to set up a betting pool on when Maine ‘finally runs out of patience for the new kid’. So far the only one that’s bitten is South and I think that’s more of a _her_ thing than a _you_ thing.”

“Did she bet on longer than York?”

“Yes.”

“Then she has the right idea, that’s easy money,” Wash said. “You know Maine. They’re… chill. York just thinks they have no patience because they have very little patience for _him_ most of the time.” His idle footsteps came to a halt. “Maine and I get on fine. We’ve run a couple drops together and they’ve gone great. They’ve even offered to show me some cool stars out on the observation deck.” He rapped his knuckles against something vaguely hollow. “Dammit.”

“Not wood.”

“I give up,” he said, returning to his position by the door. “I accept my fate.”

As if on cue, Carolina’s voice brought their radios to life with a simple order of, “ _Sitrep?”_ and, as if on cue, the terminal in front of Connie flashed up a warning.

<ACCESS DENIED. SYSTEM WIPE INITIATED. SELF DESTRUCT INITIATED.>

“Oh no no no no— _shit,”_ Connie cursed, barely resisting the unhelpful urge to slam a fist against the terminal. “This is _your doing_ , Washington!”

“What?” Wash said. “What’s happening?”

Carolina spoke again. “ _Connie? Sitrep?_ ”

“They’ve kicked me out of the system, initiated a complete wipe of their files _and_ set off a self-destruct for good measure,” she said, barely pausing for breath and her fingers flying across the keys, “helpfully, they’ve decided to give me a giant blaring warning that they’re doing so; _unhelpfully_ , there’s no indication of how long until this thing blows.”

“ _Are the contents of the drive still intact?”_

“All of our drives are protected against outside interference, so— yes.”

“ _Then recover the drive and get out of there,_ ” Carolina said in a way that sounded _very_ much like a direct order. Right. Get away from the exploding computer. That was a sensible order.

“I didn’t get everything,” Connie said anyway, already in the process of peeling back the newest layers of protection that blocked her from the off switch for these fresh inconveniences. “I can get back in and reverse the failsafe.”

Wash coughed. “Uh, Connie, not that I doubt your skills, but if we don’t have any idea when that thing is going to blow…”

“ _Agent Connecticut,_ ” Connie flinched, full agent title, that was the equivalent of your mother pulling out your middle name, “ _the chance at more information is not worth your life. Recover the drive and get out._ ”

“With all due respect, boss, I’m not sure—” she bit her tongue a second before the sentence finished the way it did in her head—a scathing indictment of the Director’s priorities that surprised even her—and composed herself, “I’m not sure I agree with that statement.”

The comm. line didn’t close, it fell silent. Faint static produced by the disturbance of Carolina’s breathing made the hairs on the back of Connie’s neck stand on end.

She imagined that all Carolina could hear was the click of the keys under her fingertips, her own breathing stalled.

“ _How long do you_ think _you have?_ ”

Connie released her breath and her canine tooth caught her lip sharply enough that it returned with a hint of iron at the tip. “A couple more minutes. It’s likely wired to run through the whole system, they’d need time to get anyone nearby out of range of the potential blast. Which— okay, you guys might want to evacuate just in case.”

Carolina sighed. “ _You have one minute. Then you leave. That’s an_ order _, Connecticut, do you understand?_ ”

“Understood, Carolina. Thank you.”

The line went dead, and Connie took a deep breath.

One minute. That would have to be enough time.

The software in her helmet was already doing what it was designed to do, picking away at layer after layer of security without her having to lift a finger, but there were things that needed a more _human_ touch. With the warning screen stripped away, she could see what she was doing and what she was doing was finding a straight path through to the override.

Time wasn’t on her side, but experience was; she’d been working with the code used by these cells for months. All she needed was the right backd _oor_ and—

 _There_.

<SYSTEM WIPE CANCELLED. SELF DESTRUCT CANCELLED.>

Connie all but slumped against the terminal.

“Oh thank god,” Wash said, vocalising the relief that washed over her. There really had been no guarantee they had a full minute at all. “ _Please_ tell me they can’t turn that back on.”

“They can’t,” theoretically, “we’re clear,” theoretically. Sighing, she re-opened the line to Carolina, “Crisis averted. Gathering the last of the intel now. ETA five minutes.”

“ _Good job, Connie. We’ll be waiting._ ”

The line cut off just as Connie’s helmet thunked against the screen.

“ _—however I will remind you all that the secrecy of our operations is of the_ utmost _importance,_ ” said a perfect mimicry of the Director’s voice, broadcasting out of the speakers on South’s helmet, “ _the Insurrection cannot become privy to the size of our tiny_ dicks— _”_ (“Oh no.”) _“—or it would surely bring about the collapse of Project Freelancer and the very UNSC itself._ ”

“I hate that,” Wash said. “Truly. I _truly_ hate that.”

“If hell exists,” York said, pausing part-way through the removal of his leg armour, “you’re going there solely for making me think about the Director’s dick. And the person who gave you that voice modulator is right behind you.”

“What?” South said, already stripped out of all of her armour besides her helmet. “ _You’re telling me you don’t want to think about the Director’s tiny dong?_ ” said York’s own voice, reflected back at him like a distorted fairground mirror.

York sucked in his lips and exhaled. “Nopety-nope-nope- _nope._ Going to blank that from my memory. Please, for the love of all that is good in the world, never, _never_ , use your voice modulator to mimic me again.”

“ _Tough shit, dickstink._ ”

“ _South_ ,” Carolina snapped, looking more disturbed than Wash and York combined—with good reason, “that’s enough.”

“ _Eu_ gh _,_ ” South said, half in York’s voice and half in her own, pulling her helmet off, “spoilsport.”

“That is _exactly_ the kind of mockery that got you in trouble back at home, South,” North said, walking by on his way to the showers.

“Shut the fuck up, North,” she said, with only a hint of bite. “Don’t forget, I can do your fuckin voice without the modulator.”

He only laughed, vanishing around the corner.

South dropped down onto the bench next to a Connie who was barely containing giggles in a bitten lip, her fingers laced around the back of her skull to protect it from the metal of the locker. “At least _someone_ appreciates my comedic genius.”

“Oh, I’m as horrified as everyone else,” Connie teased, “I think I’ve just built up a tolerance from bunking with you for months.”

South flashed her a grin, throwing one leg up over the other.

“You did good work out there today, Connie,” Carolina said, looking back over her shoulder as she hung her chestplate from the magnetic clamps in her locker. “That was a bold choice you made, and it paid off. Your rank up was well-deserved.”

Hovering over them the way it always did, the leaderboard displayed Connie’s name sat a number five—directly in-between the twins—for real, this time. A combination of the large amount of data recovered and Carolina’s word had secured her promotion.

She was annoyed to find that it still brought with it a sense of… satisfaction.

“Thank you, Carolina,” she said, genuinely, “for trusting my judgement.”

Carolina smiled. “There’s more to missions than close quarters combat and firefights, this team has been lacking in key areas for a while.”

“Hey, I heard that!” York interjected. Carolina waved him off.

“We all have a role to play. Yours is to handle computers and intel. I won’t always be so easy on you, but if you know something I don’t? Speak up,” she said. In one smooth motion, she unsealed her undersuit and pulled it down, stripping herself bare. “Keep up the good work.”

With that, she put her folded suit into her locker, grabbed a towel, and headed down the hall to the showers.

“Look at you,” South said, elbowing Connie in the side, “standing up to the fuckin’ boss and getting _praised_ for it, gotta give me some fucking lessons.”

Connie stood up, peeling apart the seals of her suit. “I didn’t even know I was going to get away with it until I did. Not sure that’s something I can teach.”

“Eh,” South shrugged, head angled back and those sharp blue eyes of hers on Connie, “I’m sure there’s _some_ things you could teach me, mischief.”

With a playful roll of her eyes, Connie kicked her suit off her foot and into South’s chest. South just grinned again, folding the kevlar for her whilst she retrieved her shower bag.

“Go ahead,” South said, standing up and stretching out. “I’ll stuff this in your locker and follow.”

“Thank you,” Connie said, throwing her towel over her shoulder.

She passed North in the hall, already back in boxers and rubbing his hair dry. Only Carolina was still in the showers when she turned the corner, relaxed as Connie had ever seen her under the stream of water from one of the front two shower heads.

Behind her, inset into the far back wall of the showers, its blue light reflecting in the water, was another leaderboard. This one liked to adjust depending on which comm. bands it read as being in the room.

Picking at the scar across her hand, Connie dropped her towel onto the nearby bench and took the middle shower on the opposite side to Carolina. Still, the leaderboard lingered in the corner of her eye.

Her brow furrowed.

Intrusive hardly seemed strong enough a word, anymore.

“Thank fuck, no dude-ass,” came South’s vibrant voice a moment later, the tightness in Connie’s chest lifting with it. South paraded into the room without a care and tossed her towel on top of Connie’s, playfully flipping the long side of her hair into her face on her way past to the rearmost showers. “Always a bonus.”

With the light blocked out by South’s tall stature and broadly muscled… self, Connie was able to set the thought out of her mind and focus on _other_ things.

Time had always passed strangely out there, in space. Even so close to a colonised system, the _Invention_ ran on its own, artificial time—day and night cycles timed to the minute, with little to no adjustments for the seasons. The lack of variation made it so that slipping into a routine was easy enough to be both a blessing and a curse.

Connie always welcomed the comfort of routine, but, when your daily schedule was identical down to the _minute_ , it became all too easy to fall into a pattern that sent day after day down the metaphorical drain.

The week following that mission was one of those weeks.

The amount of data she had recovered required extended sessions in the Intelligence Centre to decrypt and sort through, replacing standard training slots for the sake of prioritising prompt results. Connie found herself spending more time in the Intelligence Centre than anywhere else on the ship and one session bled into the next, into the next, into the next…

Everything else she ran on through on autopilot. Breakfast, central hub, training, shower, Intelligence Centre—every morning, on repeat, ingrained behaviours from months of the same morning routine. If it didn’t require thought, she didn’t think. Her brainpower was reserved for the quite frankly ridiculous workload she’d given herself.

“Maybe I should have just followed Carolina’s orders,” she joked during her lunch slot on… one of the days. Wednesday, maybe?

It got so bad that, after almost a full week of her internal autopilot being engaged, she didn’t notice she had a visitor in the Intelligence Centre until she turned to talk to Mass and instead—

“Hey, Mass, does this look right to y—ork!” she said, jumping hard enough to push her chair back an inch. York grinned and gave her a two-finger wave, kicking his legs up onto the edge of the terminal until she shoved them off. “Sorry, I had _no_ idea you were there. How long have you—?”

“About ten minutes.”

“Shit. Sorry, York.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I know hyperfocus when I see it,” he said, throwing his legs back up. Connie grabbed his foot and pointedly dropped it off the edge. “I just busied myself reading all that classified shit going by your screen.”

“It’s not technically classified to _you_ , York.”

“Details, details.” He waved dismissively and Connie rolled her eyes, though not without amusement. “Anyway, just swinging by to see how things are going. Oh, and to give you this,” he said, pulling out a dark chocolate and almond snack bar. “From South. Because, and I quote, ‘I know she’s fucking in there being a little tit and forgetting she needs fucking food’. So… there you go.”

He tossed Connie the bar and she caught it in both hands. The plastic crinkled beneath her fingers as she thumbed at the familiar, generic text on the material. South had remembered

“It _is_ about time I had a break, I suppose,” she said with a smile.

Over York’s shoulder, she saw Mass, leaning against the wall just inside the doorway to the Intelligence Centre, with the white and blue armoured figure of Alaska standing on the other side of the threshold—a loophole in the rule about non-intelligence agents being barred from the room.

If even ze was taking a break, then she was definitely overdue.

Minimising her work, she spun her chair around to face York properly and leaned back. “Things are… going. There’s a lot of intel to get through. We’ve got some new leads; communications are pointing us to more bases, but not to the root of the communications network itself.”

She peeled apart the plastic wrapped on her treat and took a bite, sinking a little deeper into her seat.

“Reckon the new recon assignment the Director’s got North and I set up to tackle is one of those new locations,” York said, his feet propped back on the terminal. Connie only glared, this time, until the weight of it made him move them on his own. “Only came through today.”

“ _You_ ,” Connie said, raising a brow, “on a _recon_ mission?”

York pointed a finger at her and gave her a look. “Now listen here, you—”

Connie just giggled around a mouthful of chocolate almonds and York chuckled.

“No, but, serious answer, the vantage point they want us at is apparently behind some pretty tight security. So they need me to get us in,” he said with a shrug. Once again, his feet found their way onto the terminal. “I’ll just run lock simulations whilst North does his thing.”

Connie smiled and nodded as a mask for the sharp kick to his chair that followed, forcing his legs down as he was spun around in a dizzying circle.

They fell easily into a casual conversation about this and that—once he stopped spinning, at least. Connie ate her bar slowly, dragging out her unofficial break as long as she dared and letting York find the end of his seemingly endless sentences whilst she chewed. Eventually, however, all that was left of the treat were the crumbs on her bottom lip and York hopped up to his feet, wishing her luck and sanity in the next stretch of her work.

He was half-way to the door when he turned around and started walking backwards. “Hey, last thing—we’re playing poker again tonight, in the rec room. You finally gonna join in?”

“Not tonight, York. I’m going to be so mentally exhausted after today that you guys would steamroll me,” she said, a half-truth. The other half was that she wasn’t set up to best… _take advantage_ , of the poker games, just yet. “Maybe next time.”

“Tell me you’ll at least come by and watch?”

“ _Only_ because South and Wash will be there.”

“Good enough for me,” he said, giving her a thumbs up. “Alright, see you tonight, Connie.”

Connie waved him off and, when he was finally gone, took a deep breath and spun back to face her terminal. Another few hours of work and hopefully she’d have something new to offer the Director. Hopefully.

As she waited for her screen to wake back up, she glanced at the now discarded wrapper on her desk and rocked from side to side a little, a pleasant buzz in her nerves.

Pulling up a chat window, she typed a quick: <thank you for the gift <3 > to South, before digging back into her work.

When, five minutes later, she received a simple: <nbd, mischief, you deserved the treat ;)> in return, it was all she could do not to start flapping.

The next morning, Connie woke with her internal alarm as she always did; groaned into her pillow, like she always did; hopped up and stretched, like she always did—but then, before she pulled on her clothes, like she always did, she dug through the pocket of her sweats and pulled out a pack of fancy jerky she’d grabbed from the commissary the night before.

Careful not to rustle the package, she set it down on South’s bedside table, then continued with her morning routine.

She was nursing the last dregs of a hot chocolate when she stepped into her usual spot in the central hub—a little treat for herself, instead of her usual juice. Her fingers wrapped tight around the comforting heat of the cup, her lips around the rim, as she scanned the newsfeeds.

The SPARTAN declassification was still there, even now, taking up a whole screen of its own between the leaderboard and shipside news. On the other screens, a growing list of recently glassed planets scrolled by slowly: Verent, Camber, Resol, Kroedis II, Mesa—

Scalding chocolate splashed her bare ankles. A resounding _crack_ pierced her ears.

_Resol._

Everything stopped—her _heart_ stopped, caught between one beat and the next as her eyes flicked desperately back up the screen to fall upon what was barely a _footnote’s_ worth of text dedicated to the _hundreds_ upon _hundreds_ of _thousands_ of lives that coloured the surface of the colony she’d left behind.

 _<_ Colony RESOL Glassed.

Date: Unknown, est. 2547-48.

Less than 50,000 survivors. Minimal UNSC-Covenant engagement. _>_

Less than _fifty thousand_ —

Connie choked on air and time snapped back into focus, her heart skipping the next beat as the gut-punch landed. Nausea. Panic crawling beneath her skin, tendrils of it that clawed along her nerves to wrap around her chest, around and around, tighter and _tighter_ and— and— _oh god,_ she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t _breathe_ —

Resol was— her _home_ was—

“…Connie?”

Her head jerked up. There was blood on her arm, smeared by the hand wrapped tight around her opposite shoulder as her body collapsed in on itself, curled into a tight ball close to the ground and— and—

“Connie, what’s wrong?” Wash. It was Wash. Freckles and bleached hair and brown eyes and _too close_ , hovering over her with a concerned hand only centimetres from touching her and— and— “Whoa!”

A bloody patch on his shirt. His back against the ground, his limbs splayed to catch his fall.

Connie scrambled to her feet, backing up step by step, nearly slipping in the puddle of hot chocolate pooling on the floor. “I’m sorry, I— I need to— I’m sorry!”

“Connie, wait—”

But she was already gone, ceramic cracked beneath her feet.

The hallways seemed so much _tighter_ than they usually did, closing in around her as she moved as fast as she dared through the maze of the ship. Everything looked the same in the faint haze that settled over her senses, the grey and black and silver and nothing else, monotonous and dull and— and— those _stupid_ leaderboards, the only frame of reference for where she was, landmarks to lead her back to Alpha Hall. Back to her room. Back to this morning, back to before— before—

It was early. Early enough that many of the agents had yet to get up. No one cared about the agent walking a little too slowly to be a run but running a little too fast to be a walk, making a beeline for safety from something— something _intangible_ , something so real and yet not at all. Or, if they did, they had the sense not to get in her way. Not to stare.

Blood trickled across her palm, down her fingers. There was probably a trail.

Panic still constricting her chest, its grasp growing tighter and tighter by the second, it was all she could do not to collapse, not to hyperventilate until she was so dizzy that movement was a distant impossibility. No, no, she had to get away. She had to get out of sight, out of _here—_

The next thing she knew, she was keying the access code into her door with blood-stained fingers when, one number too early, it slid open.

And there was South. Eyes wide, staring at her in a way that should have made her feel trapped but— but didn’t, this time. It only made her feel seen. That alone made her want to hide away, being seen _like this—_ like— like—

South was holding the pack of jerky in her hand. Like she’d come to the door when she heard her, ready to greet her, ready to say thank you—but found her there not returning for something she forgot, but with blood on her hand and arm and tears starting to well in her eyes and oh god, she couldn’t be _seen_ like this—

“…mischief?” South said, all of the inherent attitude of her voice stripped away. “What’s wrong?”

“Can—” her voice caught and she breathed in deeply, only for her breath to shake too, “can you cover— cover for me, please? I can’t… I can’t do training like this.”

“No shit, mischief,” South said, but… gently. Remarkably so, for her. “Yeah, fucking ‘course I can cover for you. You gonna be okay? Stupid fuckin’ question, I know, but I gotta ask.”

“I’ll—” The words caught, again, and Connie swallowed. A tear dribbled down her cheek and she swiped at it, a dash of blood left behind. South’s concerned frown deepened. “I’ll be fine. Later. We can— we can talk later, in a— a few hours, maybe, but right now I need to be alone before I snap at you or— or something, I’m sorry.”

“Mischief? You don’t have to be fuckin’ sorry,” South said as she stepped out of the way, only leaving her foot over the very edge of the threshold to keep the door from shutting. “Go fuckin— do what you gotta do. I’ll cover your ass.”

Exhaling, Connie nodded. “Thank you.”

With that, she stepped inside, and South removed her foot. The door shut behind her.

She was alone.

The silence in the room felt… worse, somehow. Heavier. Dead silence draped over signs of life—crumpled bedsheets, discarded clothes, a half-open footlocker—seemed… wrong. Unsettling.

The fear wrapped tight around her lungs constricted further and her breathing began to quicken.

Instinctively, her hands raised to her face, only for the unmistakable bite of iron to make her flinch away. Her palm was still smeared with blood, drying where the fresh wound across her palm—from the cup or her own nails, she wasn’t quite sure—had started to clot over.

Only when she looked at it did it start to sting.

 _Focus on the blood. Clean up_ , she thought, willing herself to move. Her next step nearly saw her collapse to the floor, her legs shaky and uncertain now the rush of adrenaline that got her there had faded. _Water. First aid kit. Move._

One step at a time, she dragged herself into the adjoining wet room. Mentally walking herself through the steps, she turned on the tap, held her hand under it, and pulled the first aid kit off the wall with the other. Open the kit. Remove the wound cleaning tools. Carefully clean the cut. Dry your hand. Wrap it in a bandage.

Wash the blood from your shoulder and face.

Wipe away the tears dribbling free.

Stare into the mirror at your own, expressionless face until you lose track of time and snap out of it only when the damned comm. band wrapped around your wrist starts to beep.

Gritting her teeth, Connie wrenched the band off her wrist.

Marching back into the room, she threw it into her footlocker and slammed the lid shut. Seconds later, another, now muffled, beep sounded from inside and it took all of her self-restraint not to pull it out and crush it underfoot.

It would be beeping incessantly within minutes.

In a fit of desperation, she gathered almost all of the blankets in the room and piled them atop the locker.

That would have to do.

Another tear slipped over the curve of her cheek and into the dip of her lips, salty and sharp.

Sweeping it away, she pushed herself to her feet.

_Not yet. Don’t lose it yet._

Dragging herself up onto her bed—barely resisting the call of the sheets that offered to shelter her from the world—she grabbed her PC. Swiping away the tears that continued to fall, she forced a connection to the _Mother of Invention’s_ superluminal communication relay.

‘No external communication’ was one of the Project’s most-emphasised rules.

There was no need for it. It was strictly forbidden to contact family, friends, _anyone_ outside of the Project’s ranks. In the Project, your past didn’t exist. Until now, she’d resisted the urge to break that rule by reassuring herself that there was no point in breaking it. By telling herself that she’d see them when she got out, when this was all over.

But now…

Swallowing the lump growing in her throat, she keyed in her mothers’ communication code and the necessary authorisation code.

**CONNECTING . . .**

. . .

. . .

. . .

**CONNECTION FAILED**

Fingernails dug into the bandages wrapped around her palm. Fumbling around, she grabbed the beads from her bedside table and began to roll them. _Focus. Don’t lose it. Do not lose it._

< **Try Again** >

**CONNECTING . . .**

. . .

. . .

. . .

**CONNECTION FAILED**

_Do not lose it. Do_ not _lose it._

< **Try Again** >

**CONNECTING . . .**

. . .

. . .

. . .

**CONNECTION FAILED**

The lid slammed shut.

Connie choked on a sob.

There were a million and one reasons for there to be no response. True superluminal communication was relatively new technology. Before the Project she would never have entertained the idea of being able to communicate so quickly across such a distance, there were transmission delays, bandwidth limits, the _cost._ Expecting a response was ridiculous and yet _knowing_ that didn’t make it any easier to _breathe_ or make it any more likely that they were _alive_ or— or—

The sharp sting of nails against flesh cut through the panic. Deep breath. Deep breath. _Don’t lose it now._

Send a message. Something they could respond to later.

Find the list of survivors.

There had to be a list of survivors.

Fighting back tears, the message she composed was quick and clumsy, but it did its job and it _sent_ , thank fuck, it sent. A response could take hours, days, weeks, if a response ever came at all—if they were _alive_ , at all—but it was something. It was _something._

A little digging told her the news had been broken days ago, the name on the board lost in the haze of day after day run through on automatic. A little digging took her to the so-called list of survivors that held barely a _thousand_ names, names she recognised as primarily prominent public figures, shady businesspeople, people with _money_ —people she’d spat the names of, people who’d caused _so many_ of the colony’s problems.

The rest of the colony’s survivors had ‘yet to be censused’.

There was no way to know if her family was okay.

 _Oh god._ There was no way to— no way to—

Her comm. band began to beep.

And something snapped.

One tear dribbled off her chin onto the plastic beneath her fingers, then another, then another.

Emotional freefall, the meltdown no longer held back by the promise of another step, another thing to do, another thing to try, another way to _know—_

The piercing sound of that _goddamn band_ punctured the air like a knife driven into her ear and she _screamed_ , curling in around herself and clutching at her ears as she began to rock. Everything was sharper, brighter, louder—the nails that dug into her skin, the lights above her, the creak of the bed. The beeping. The _goddamn beeping—_

Tearing up from the bed, she threw away the pile of blankets and grabbed the footlocker by the indent in its side, _dragging_ it across the room and into the wet room. Stuffing it as far back in the room as she could, she turned on the shower at full blast and slammed the door behind her.

When she could still hear a faint beep every other second she pulled every blanket from that pile onto her bed and buried herself beneath them.

Finally, _finally_ , with her face pressed into a pillow and swathed in the comfort of a month’s worth of blankets, the beeping was muted.

And the wave of sobs that wracked her body was muffled.

Every sob pulled the tendrils of fear tighter around her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs. Her skin was _crawling_ with it, an unscratchable itch that her nails couldn’t _quite_ catch no matter how hard she tried. Fear, panic, _grief—_ all-consuming grief, flooding over her in wave after wave of memories of a home she’d hoped that, against all odds, she’d _go back to_ one day. But now…

She’d seen the footage of glassed planets that they didn’t want anybody to see.

She’d seen the molten remains of entire cities melted down into twisted heaps of slag, miles upon miles of smouldering black glass.

Everything would be gone. All the places she’d ever known reduced to— to— to _nothing._

Her home.

All the little things, the little places.

Her first computer, tucked away in the corner of her room. Her brother’s room, filled with all the things he’d left behind. Her mothers’ photo album, printed out on paper all old-fashioned like.

The corner of the local marketplace where she’d kissed her first girlfriend. The hangout she and her friends hunkered down in to pass the time and forget about the war.

Everywhere that mattered.

Gone.

All gone.

Everything felt… distant, her senses drawing inwards until even her fingertips felt numb. The sound of her own sobs was muffled, like it was coming from another room. Clinging her pillow tight to her chest she felt herself shaking, choking on her own breath and _trembling_ with the force of the grief that consumed her, but it felt— it felt—

It felt far away.

Everything felt so far away.

This was never supposed to happen.

She was supposed to go home. She’d made a promise.

_“Take care of yourself,” her ma had said, her arms wrapped so tight around her she could barely breathe. The oxygen deprivation was worth the experience—the bear hug and the familiar scent of her cologne that reminded her of home. “Don’t let anyone push you around.”_

_“You know I won’t,” she had said back, clinging on as if her life had depended on it._

_“Do you know when you’ll be back?” her mama had asked, the one question she never could have answered._

_When the war ended? When they kicked her out? When she died and was brought back in a body bag? None of those were an answer. None of those could smooth out the concerned crinkle in her mama’s brow._

_And yet, leaning her cheek into her hand, she answered, “As soon as possible, mama. I promise.”_

It was an unkeepable promise, really.

It always had been.

But it seemed better than nothing, at the time.

Better than the nothing her stupid brother had given them, at least.

Moving her limbs was a battle. Dragging her arm from around the pillow, she pushed through the nest of blankets and blindly fumbled until her fingers closed around the small bird. Carefully, she clutched it in her hand and pulled it back to her chest, curling around it protectively.

Maybe he’d survived. Wherever he was.

The shrike’s sharp beak pressed into her palm. Even that jab of pain was dulled.

Pressing her lips to the top of the bird’s head, she thought of her family and _cried._

She didn’t know how long she lay there.

Buried beneath a mound of blankets and with all noise beyond the four walls of the room blocked out by the white noise of the shower, she sank into a state utterly displaced from the world around her. Time meant nothing in a state like this, alone and wracked by a self-perpetuating cycle of grief, fear and stress. Moments of calm were followed by waves of sobs and pitiful blubbering about things she couldn’t hope to control.

Until, eventually, the world started to come back into focus.

She was distantly aware that she was still crying, that her face was wet, and her eyes were burning with salty tears. The sobs that shook her body started to subside, little by little, until she was able to muster the will to push herself up from her blanket fortress—her head eventually finding a gap in the mound and pushing through to the cool air of the ship, the darkness of the room.

Wiping her eyes, she shook her head. She’d moved so little the lights had automatically turned off.

“Lights— lights on,” she croaked out, swallowing in a vain effort to sooth her throat.

The lights turned on and the world turned white, pain radiating through her the backs of her eyes.

“Shit, lights— lights off, lights off.”

Darkness bathed the room again and she sighed, rubbing circles above her eyes. Bad idea. Bad idea. 

For the first few minutes, she did nothing but sit. Pulling one of the nicer blankets around her shoulders, she relaxed into the comforting texture and breathed deeply until the tears still dribbling from her eyes had all but dried up and her breathing was almost even.

This wasn’t the first meltdown she’d brought herself back from and it wouldn’t be the last. As much as she wished it was.

Carefully perching her shrike on her pillow, she stroked a finger along the familiar curve of its back and tapped a gentle rhythm on its head as she set her muted data-pad on her lap. Breathing in deeply, she unlocked it.

Hundreds of repetitive alerts from her band telling her she’d missed her assigned slots, easily wiped away with the swipe of a finger.

Three messages from Wash, worried about where she’d run to, a simple but telling ‘oh god Connie’, then an offer to talk if she needed to.

Two messages from South, asking if she wanted her to bring anything back and checking if she was okay yet.

One message from the leaderboard, an alert about her demotion from fifth to eighth.

She hated how that made a lump swell in her throat.

Dismissing the final message, she typed a quick response to Wash thanking him for checking up on her and telling her she’d talk to him later. Then, she spent much longer replying to South, tripping over what should have been an equally simple response, before she finally settled on asking for the snacks she’d smuggled into her locker and permission to come back to the room.

It was ten minutes before a response came, but it was comforting in its normality. South asked what her locker code was only to, only seconds later, dismiss her own question with a brief ‘nvm’ that was quickly followed by thumbs up.

Connie almost smiled.

Over the course of the next few minutes, she mustered just enough strength to wipe her face and slip into some more comfortable nightclothes, rather than her exercise-tailored civvies, before returning to her blanket cocoon.

It was there, wrapped up in the softest blanket the ship had to offer with only her messy hair and her eyes poking out, that South found her as she stepped through the door.

South snorted, folding her arms over her chest. “Hey mischief. Cosy in there?”

“Mmhm.” Wriggling her head up a little further, she tucked her chin over the outer layer of blanket. “D’you bring the snacks?”

Crinkling answered her question before South did. Her hand emerged from her pocket wrapped around a collection of smuggled snack packets from the mess hall that Connie had whisked away over time. “Course I fuckin’ did. You missed lunch, not gonna let you starve,” she said, tossing the small pile onto the mattress beside her.

“Lunch?” Connie groaned. “Fuck, it’s that late?”

“Sure is.” Arms crossing over her chest, South huffed. “Covered for you the best I could, but I saw they dropped you down anyway, the fucking _assholes._ You never miss shit! You’re always on fucking time, you literally _just_ got fucking moved up a rank for doing a damn good fucking job and you lose _three fucking places_ for missing some repetitive fucking training?! The fuck kinda balance is that?!”

Grabbing one of the pillows that had fallen away from Connie’s pile, she hurled it against the wall behind her bed where it landed with a soft thud, back in place. With another huff, she dropped down next to Connie.

“I didn’t exactly report that I would be missing my sessions,” Connie said, concerned by how easily the excuse rolled off her tongue. South was right, the system had no balance. Why was she making excuses for it?

“I fucking _told_ F.I.L.S.S. you were fucking missing shit for personal reasons! She told me she fucking registered it! Fuck, maybe I shoulda just gone to the Dickrector himself.”

“It’s not your fault,” Connie sighed, “it’s the band. Without formally excusing _myself_ it kept tracking my position. It started going off not long after I got in here. Now it’s in the bathroom.”

South raised a brow. “…is that why the shower is running.”

“Yes. It wouldn’t— it wouldn’t stop beeping and the footlocker on its own wasn’t enough to muffle it and— and—” Taking a deep breath, she squeezed her eyes tight to prevent any tears from welling. “I just needed it to stop, you know?”

“Yeah,” South said, ruffling her hair. Connie’s nose scrunched. “I know. Feeling any better?”

“I… not… really?”

Shuffling back to sit with her back against the wall, South offered an arm. “Wanna fuckin’ talk about it?”

Connie sniffled slightly, bouncing over to tuck herself up against her side. “I might start crying again.”

“Eh,” South shrugged, squeezing her waist. Connie sank into her touch, her head dropping against South’s shoulder. Strong and secure. “C’mon. The fuck happened, Connie?”

Connie worried her lip between her teeth. “…you know how I check the hub every morning?”

There was a moment of silence and furrowed brows, before South’s eyes widened with realisation. “Oh. Oh _fuck_ , Connie, your colony—?”

Connie nodded. Swiping away the tears that welled in her eyes before she could stop them, she took another deep breath. “It’s gone. I don’t even know exactly when. This week’s been busy, I don’t think I ever properly looked at the board until this morning despite going every day. And even if I had, it’s— it’s like we said before, it can be _months_ or longer before a glassing is reported. The official report only dated it to this year or last year. It could have been gone since I _left_ for all I know.”

“ _Fuckshit_. Your fucking colony got glassed and they still fucking de-ranked you?! They know where you’re fucking from!”

“Like I said, it could have been there for a week without me noticing, it’s not—” The excuses threatened to keep rolling, so Connie bit her tongue. Ow. “What’s done is done. I don’t want to think about that I just… I’d rather just talk.”

South looked like she was doing some tongue biting of her own as she sighed and gave a simple, “Alright,” with her fingers combing through Connie’s hair. “Talk all you need to, mischief.”

So talk she did.

She talked about her home, the little outer colony in a distant system of planets that the UNSC abandoned like so many others once the war got going—but cut herself off before she could spill into talk that bordered upon treasonous.

She talked about her neighbourhood, about the little places that had been lost; the graffiti on the walls her friends had drawn; the familiar stalls in the marketplace that sprung up as things got scarce; the rooftops and curbs and platforms between city levels.

She talked about her friends she hadn’t seen since they went off to war. She talked about her family and, as she did, she took hold of the fake coaster that hid old family holo-stills, images of everything from her mothers’ wedding day to candid photos of happy days long passed.

By the time she found herself running out of things to say, there were silent tears dribbling down her cheeks. Cradling a holo-still of her and her family—a younger, beaming Connie stood between her mothers, with her brother’s arms wrapped around their shoulders—she inhaled and exhaled slowly, blinking the tears back.

“…you like to think you're prepared for this, you know?” she said, leaning against an uncharacteristically silent South. In all the time she’d sat and rambled, South had said barely a word except to comfort Connie when she began to spiral. “It's almost inevitable, so— so you tell yourself that you're prepared for when it happens to you.” Sighing, she wiped her face. “I guess I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was.”

“Guess not,” South said, giving her a tight squeeze around the waist. “Don’t worry, anyone even looks like they’re gonna give you fucking shit about this and I’ll kick their ass out the airlock.”

Despite herself, her nose crinkled, and a giggle bubbled past her lips. “Thank you.”

“No fucking problem, I’m always ready to kick some assholes out an airlock.”

“Okay I know you’re joking, but please don’t _actually_ kick anyone out of an airlock.”

South winked. “No promises.”

Another giggle escaped Connie as she playfully smacked South on the stomach.

A comfortable silence fell over the room. Connie sat with her head rested on South’s shoulder, tucked under her wing and listening to the sound of her breathing. South was a loud person by personal design, everything about her was loud, brash, unashamed—her laughter, her attitude, her body language, her words—she was who she was and _fuck_ you if you had a problem with that.

South was all-consuming laughter. South was biting words and hard-hitting punches. South was creative curses and targeted jabs that never really hurt unless she wanted them to. South was inked skin and dyed hair and scars and bloody noses and a smirk on her lips.

South was… a lot of things. South was _there_ , with her, without her even having to ask.

“Hey,” she said, after a long moment of quiet, “I meant to ask… how did you know my locker code? I haven’t told you it before.”

“Huh?” South said, only to snap her fingers a second later. “Oh, fuck, that. Yeah, I just kinda… guessed? Everyone knows that people use fucking dates and other stupid bullshit as their passwords for shit, right?” (“Not _everyone_ , but—”) “And I remembered you telling me that fucking story about the first time you hacked your school’s grade system to be a little nerd. You very fucking specifically spelled out the whole fucking date when you started. So…”

She shrugged.

Connie blinked.

The first thought that passed through her mind was that she really should have known better than to pick a date as her passcode.

The second was that South had remembered her silly little story about the first thing she’d ever hacked in her life, a momentous occasion for her but nothing but a story to anyone else. Even Wash forgot the finer details within a couple of days, had to be reminded of her code every now and then.

It had to have been at least two weeks since she told that story again.

The third thought was that her jaw was dropped and the fourth was a deliberate order to shut it. She buried her face in her blankets and breathed out, slowly, hoping that South hadn’t seen the ridiculous look on her face or the heat that had started to flood towards it.

Oh.

Oh _fuck._

…Wash was never going to let her live this down.

“I’d say I should change my code now,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice from betraying her, “but I don’t think anyone else will _ever_ guess that and who knows, it might come in handy later. You knowing how to get in there.”

“Let me guess, you already know my fucking code?”

“…I tried not to, but yes.”

South snorted a laugh, ruffling her hair again. “You can’t help yourself.”

 _I really can’t_ , Connie thought, finding herself pressing her head into South’s hand. Quickly, she smacked the thought aside. _Wow. What the fuck, self._

Well, there was one silver lining to her meltdown: Wash wouldn’t dare tease her today.

When South’s band gave its standard fifteen-minute warning, she was almost relieved for the interruption, if not for the jolt of pain the noise sent through her.

South rolled her eyes. “Stupid fucking thing. Guess my free slot is almost fucking over.”

“What have you got next?”

“Self-selected training. Booked myself into a basic training room,” South said. “You gonna formally excuse yourself and nap?”

“As tempting as it is… I don’t think I should push my luck,” Connie sighed, extracting herself from South’s comforting hold and stretching out her stiffened muscles.

South gave her a look. “Mischief. You just found out you might’ve lost your _whole fucking family._ ”

It felt far past a question of ‘might’, with no response to her message so far and her ever-decreasing hope that there would ever be a response at all. Logic dictated that it simply hadn’t been long enough for them to respond, or that even had they survived their displacement was the root of their silence—but logic was more easily thought than it was believed.

Especially when the odds were against you.

“And laying here stewing in my own thoughts isn’t going to help. I’ve… got the worst of it out of my system,” Connie said with a shrug. Rolling her shoulders, she groaned as tension released. “My next slot would be a self-select too… got room for another in that training room?”

South flashed a grin. “If you’re hoping I’ll go easy on you ‘cause you’re emotionally compromised, you’d be fuckin’ wrong.”

“Oh, don’t worry; I don’t need anyone to go easy on me, _I’m_ in the lead right now, remember?” Connie teased, catching her in the ribs with her elbow on her way off the bed. “10:8 in my favour, last I checked.”

“Not for long,” South said with a wink.

After Connie got dressed and they retrieved the still beeping comm. band from the wet room—leaving the poor soaked footlocker to dry, once the shower was off—they made their way to the room South had booked. The beeping only stopped when they crossed the threshold, finally letting her nerves begin to settle.

Training was comforting in its familiarity. It was simple but not mindless; every move she made against South had to be _considered_ , there was no room left for her thoughts to drift. South was good at keeping her on her toes, all momentum and force and hits designed to end a fight in as few moves as possible, whilst Connie had always been better at diversion, quick reactions and last-minute strikes at delicate places.

Their styles were as similar as they were opposite. They reflected off each other, and sparring matches could drag on as they both struggled to get the upper hand.

Still, by the end of the hour-long session the score had progressed to 12:11, in Connie’s favour, or—

“—three to two, my favour,” South panted, hands braced against her knees. “I win.”

Connie swallowed her last gulp of water and wiped her mouth. “I’m still in the lead.”

“Not for long you fucking aren’t.”

“Big talk, South, big talk.”

South flipped her the bird in a way that could be easily described as lazy, and not quite so easily described as actually flipping the bird.

Shaking her head, Connie tucked her bottle under her arm and pulled up her alerts. Nothing new from the Command server demanding an explanation for her absence, the system apparently satisfied by her return to schedule. For now, at least.

There was one new message from Wash, asking where she was and if she was free after the day’s schedule ended. She replied with a simple, ‘training room and yes, why?’ and, with promptness that indicated a message he’d had typed up in advance, he responded:

WA//: <Would you like to join Maine and me on the observation deck after dinner? They took me down earlier in the week and it was nice, kinda relaxing. Figured it might be a nice way to get your mind off some stuff.>

Connie’s face softened. That was sweet.

She was half-way through a simple ‘of course, I’d love to’ when she took pause, biting her lip. Behind her, South groaned dramatically as she stretched.

CT//: <Of course, I’d love to, thank you Wash <3 could I bring South, if that’s not imposing on Maine?>

Three little dots bounced for a good ten seconds, vanished for two, then reappeared just long enough for Wash to type:

WA//: <Sure, that’s fine.>

CT//: <Letting me off the teasing for today, huh?>

WA//: <I don’t know what you’re talking about.>

Connie shook her head.

CT//: <See you at dinner, Wash.>

Closing the message chain, she looked back over her shoulder. “Hey, South, you got plans for this evening?”

“Not really. Why?”

Connie smiled.

Once she was forced to split from South to follow the rest of her schedule, it became that much harder to keep things together. The world blurred at the edges and it was only the promise of the evening ahead that kept her sane enough to make it through to dinner, where the lively atmosphere made everything feel that little bit more real.

Montana had started another hypothetical debate, this time about a whether a Grunt or a ‘very determined chihuahua’ would win in a fight, with the vote going soundly in the chihuahua’s favour.

“Those things have enough rage packed into them to kill a hinge-head, let alone a Grunt,” Oregon had argued, to enthusiastic agreement and Montana’s half-hearted order to ‘take this seriously, guys’.

Only Virginia and Nevada seemed willing to stand against the masses.

It was hard not to laugh when _that_ argument was taking place two tables over.

It was _impossible_ not to once she witnessed Carolina stopping in her tracks, tray in hand, to process something ridiculous Louisiana had said in favour of the chihuahua, before shaking her head and walking away.

Stepping out of the mess was like stepping out of the sun and into a gloomy winter’s day, the energy of the people fading away and leaving room for the creeping threat of grief to dig its claws back in.

Until South rested a strong hand on her shoulder and the warmth seeped through her once again, staying the tide for another few minutes, at least.

The observation deck was out of the way. On the very bottom of the ship, the bow loomed far ahead of the expansive glass window out into the void of space. From here, you could stare out into the nothingness that stretched as far as the eye could see until you lost all sense of time.

Connie had never felt so small as when she stepped into that room, surrounded on all sides but one by the all-encompassing emptiness of space. She’d never been one for space travel before the Project, preferring to keep her feet firmly on the ground and never planning on stepping foot aboard a transcolonial ship if she could help it. Space was beautiful from afar, not when the only thing between you and it was a sheet of metal or glass that would throw you free in a heartbeat if something went wrong.

Now that she thought about it, she wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to come down here at all. At least, she wasn’t, until she saw Wash beckoning them over and the colossal form of Maine perched on the edge of a step, already captivated by the view ahead of them.

Wash greeted her with a hug that held all the weight of a universal kind of loss and stuttered attempts to verbalise condolences that she cut off with a squeeze and a simple ‘thank you’ that said all they needed to say.

His home colony had been gone longer than she’d been in the military. So had Maine’s.

There wasn’t a person in that room that didn’t know the grief she felt.

Such was a universe at war.

Maine knew a lot about the stars.

All they needed was their relative position and they began to name the nearby colonies’ unique constellations, pointing out the patterns in the stars—the Cervus Volans, the Errant Eye, the Northern Falls. If asked, Connie would have been hard pressed to name even one of those she could have seen from Resol, in the sky she’d lived under all her life, but Maine listed these foreign arrangements like it was second nature. In ten minutes, she heard more words from Maine than she’d heard from them in the last week.

Wash was _entranced_ , leaning back on his arms and staring up at the star-scattered darkness with an almost boyish wonder. His excitement was comforting in a way the unpredictable nothingness that caused it could never be and Connie glanced at him often, in the same way that she leant into the arm that South wrapped casually around her shoulders.

When her gaze did fall upon the expanse ahead, she found herself looking for holes in the tapestry of stars laid out before them. Holes left by the worlds that had been extinguished by the Covenant, melted down and blackened into toxic wastelands. But there were no such holes, no unnatural gaps in the pinpricks of light—the stars that shone on the lost colonies burned on, regardless of the outcome of any battle.

Still, she always found herself surprised.

…she wondered if they could see her home, from here.

“Hey, Maine?”

Maine rumbled in acknowledgement, a sound that came from deep in their chest.

“Do you… can we see _Huitz_ from here? It’s the star at the centre of my home system. I’m not sure which direction it would be in.”

Maine’s brow furrowed with thought. Making a broad, sweeping gesture, they made one of the glass panels of the window zoom in on a cluster of stars to their portside. Bringing their hand in to a fist, they tightened the zoom, centring a distant star, lightyears upon lightyears away. Part of one of the lesser constellations.

“There,” they said, “Huitz.”

Connie’s breath caught in her throat.

The arm around her shoulders tightened another notch and she leaned into it, as South said, “Mischief? You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah I’m— wow.” Blinking back the wetness in her eyes and uncurling the tight fist that would have buried nails into her palm, had it not been for the bandage across it, she exhaled. “I’m okay. Just… that light is from years ago, isn’t it? From…”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she hoped they understood.

Maine nodded. They did.

“Wow. That should _not_ hit as hard as it does,” she said, palms pressed to her eyes hard enough for static to dance in the darkness. Taking another deep breath, she told herself she wouldn’t cry. Not again. Not today. “It’s like— it’s like we’re still living in a moment where it hasn’t happened. You know what I mean? Who am I kidding, even I don’t know what I mean.”

“No, I get it,” Wash said, ruffling the long side of her hair. Despite herself, she laughed and pushed his hand away. He took hold of hers, instead. “Relativity of time and all that. The real question is… is that _comforting,_ for you, Connie? Or… the opposite.”

Maine raised their hand again and waited for her word either way, as Connie stared at the bright light—perhaps the very same light she’d been under herself, however many years ago.

For a moment, just a moment, it felt as if she was still living in a world where her home was safe.

And, for a moment, that was a comfort.

“Leave it,” she said, and Maine’s hand dropped. “Tell me about the constellation it’s in.”

Maine rumbled and, in simple but deliberately chosen words, told her about the stars that formed the Pendulum, of which Huitz, _Resol_ , marked the tip of the chain.

Humming under her breath, with her head on South’s shoulder and Wash’s fingers locked with hers, Connie found that she felt a little less small.


	6. Time and Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/8c56fb5294fa006f7a1eabf009eea06b/c2ab39f32827390c-ef/s640x960/624901de7ac7d06deb43b2b4d7f9762af504f4c6.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

Something agents learned quickly aboard the Mother of Invention was that there was no real shore leave.

In all the time Connie had been aboard the _Invention_ —around a year and a half, now—the ship had stopped at UNSC-affiliated space stations and groundside bases maybe three times. Two of those had granted them only a day’s worth of leave and all three had been supply stops, where time off was more of a consequence than the intention.

Otherwise, the closest they got to a break was the cryosleep most of the ship went under for extended slipspace jumps. Connie had never really counted that.

Finally due to leave the system in which they had spent the majority of the last few months, the _Invention_ had been forced to divert to the nearby _Spire Station_ to restock and, according to the communications Connie had intercepted, receive a variety of new and improved equipment.

Resupply would take three days. New leads on the source of the communications network had them set for another extended deployment in another system, Luminous-VI, where evidence suggested multiple Insurrectionist cells had begun to stockpile resources, gather soldiers, and orchestrate attacks in other systems. Out of sight of the UNSC, whose forces in the area had been drastically reduced due to needs elsewhere, there was no telling how large their encampments had grown.

Connie had just finished up her latest report for Command on the issue and had begun locking down her station in the Intelligence Centre. She was under strict orders from South _not_ to work during the stop and she’d never been afraid to pry work from Connie’s workaholic grip if her hand was forced. So, working right to the line, Connie had made sure to get it done before they docked.

“I’m sure when we come back there’ll be a whole new set of files to go through,” she said, fingers drumming against the terminal.

“Most certainly,” Mass said with a sigh, massaging zir temples. “Not to mention returning to work on TURNCOAT. If you could have your algorithm coding complete by the end of the next slipspace jump, that would be _greatly_ appreciated. I won’t be able to ‘get in your way’, after all.”

Connie frowned. The next slipspace jump? But she’d be—

Oh, wait. She almost forgot. Alpha Squad did things differently.

“I can’t make any promises,” she said. “Alpha’s getting new equipment in. We’ll likely spend most of the jump training with that. _But_ ,” she added, before Mass could open zir mouth again, “I will do my best. For now, all I want to think about is relaxing. Ohio invited me to join the Triplets’ D&D game the next time we actually got some leave, I’m looking forward to actually taking her up on it.”

Mass raised a brow at her. “You didn’t hear? They’ve already left. From what I gathered, they dropped out a while ago.”

“Wait, they did?” Connie said, brow knitted. “I had no idea. Ohio didn’t say anything to me.”

“Well, you _have_ been very busy up there in Alpha,” Mass said. There was a hint of derision in zir tone that, had they not been forced to spend so much time together, Connie would never have noticed. As it was, she was more than familiar with the hints of hostility in Mass’s arsenal.

Her eyes narrowed. “And what is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Mass said, barely looking at her, “it’s simply a statement of fact.”

“Sure,” Connie said, folding her arms. “ _Just_ a statement of fact.”

Mass shrugged, picked up zir helmet and, zir station now locked down, took zir leave.

Connie leaned back against her terminal and sighed, nails going to catch against the scar on her palm until they came across the newer, fresher scar that crossed the first.

Flexing her fingers, she pulled her glove back on.

Ohio would have told her if she’d had the chance to, right? Connie had been busy, since she moved up, but they were friends. Ohio would have told her if the Triplets were dropping out of the program.

But to accept that… it raised more questions that it gave answers.

Before she could begin to tackle any of them, her band beeped to alert her to the ship’s imminent docking and she sighed again. Glancing at her screen to make sure it was locked, she grabbed her own helmet and headed for her bunk. Some last-minute packing was in order.

Connie adjusted the hem of her t-shirt for what must have been the hundredth time since stepping off the ship. It still fit just fine, though her build had certainly begun to change from the stringent training, but something felt… off, about it. Or, perhaps more accurately, something felt off about wearing something other than the official civvies doled out on the _Invention._

She felt weirdly _exposed_ , being seen outside of the same four outfits she’d spent the last few months in. And all she was wearing was a patterned t-shirt. How in the galaxy were her evening clothes going to feel?

“Hey, mischief, are your legs too short to keep up or are you lost in thought?”

South didn’t seem to have the same problem. The black muscle-tank she was wearing hung off her like it was made just for her. Large armholes exposed the colourful galaxies stretching up her ribcage and the thick lines of a serpent’s body, slithering up and around her back, out of sight. Everything about her exuded her usual confidence, from her getup to the way she held both their duffels on one shoulder, the muscles of her arm flexed taut.

She was grinning at Connie, as she so often did, faded purple tips falling in front of her eyes.

“A little bit of both,” Connie said, jogging a little to catch up. “You _really_ don’t have to carry that, South.”

“Yeah, I know, you’ve only reminded me a thousand fucking times,” South said, flicking a strand of Connie’s hair into her face. “I don’t fuckin’ mind. Now, where the fuck are we bunking again?”

Blowing the strand away, Connie pulled back the sleeve of her jacket to get at her comm. band.

Even on leave, they didn’t get to take them off.

“We’re in wing 5G. The rest of the squad should be there too.”

“Any room number?”

“Nope, just a wing.”

“Sweet,” she adjusted her grip on the bags, “we get there quick enough we can claim the best one.”

“I doubt there’ll be a ‘best one’, South; it’s a military station, the bunks are probably standard.”

“Nah, there’s always a best one,” South said with a shake of her head. “You’ll see.”

South, as she so often was, was right. Of the twin bunks set aside for Alpha Squad, room 5G-C, was not only slightly larger than average—being situated on a corner—but also felt less cold and had extra power stations near the beds themselves. It was marginal, but Connie had to give it to South. She was right.

“Told you so,” South said, tossing their bags onto their usual beds. “There’s _always_ a best.”

Three days wasn’t a lot of time, in the grand scheme of things, but by the standards of the Project it was practically a summer vacation. Their schedules emptied and an entire space station at their fingertips, it was like they had all the time in the world and yet no time at all.

“So,” South said, her head dangling over the side of her bed and her legs flat against the wall, “ _obviously_ tonight we’re hitting up the _Whiskey_.”

“Obviously,” Connie said, tapping the building on the virtual floorplan. _Whiskey Tango Foxtrot_ , the _Spire’s_ on-station bar and watering hole for the steady stream of military personnel passing through. “But that’s tonight. _First…_ ” she scrolled across the map, “we need to do a little resupply of our own. What were you missing again?”

South blew her hair from her face. “Hair dye,” she said, as it fell back into a different arrangement. “Emergency supply of titty skittles—” (“I swear, you call your estrogen something different every time.”) “—and uhhh, snacks, booze. Cheaper here than it is in the ship commissary or from Niner.”

“You say that as if it won’t be gone by the time we leave slipspace,” Connie said, highlighting the appropriate areas and making a list. “I need another storage chip for my data-pad… and, yes, some more snacks, maybe some new e-books and other less practical items.”

“Hey, don’t forget fuckin’— uhh…” South snapped her fingers as if it would shake the thought loose, “new battery for your illicit photo disc. Don’t want that running out of power.”

“Oh, shit, right,” Connie said, quickly adding it to the list. Two months of almost daily use had drained the battery sharply and it wasn’t the kind you could get on the ship.

Two months. Had it _really_ been two months already?

Shaking the creeping shadow of grief loose from her shoulders, she folded her legs tighter beneath her.

“Okay, is that everything?” she said.

South’s face scrunched up in thought. “I _think_ that’s fuckin’ everything.”

“Guess we should go and actually get it, now.”

“Guess so.”

Silence fell over the room. Neither of them made a move to get up, looking at each other from across the room.

“…we _do_ have all day,” South said, after a moment. “We can, y’know, just fucking chill for a bit. We _finally_ have free fuckin’ time. No rush.”

“That’s true.” No training sessions, no appointments, nothing they had to keep time for… “So… want to lay around and be lazy for a bit first?”

South grinned. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Connie grinned back.

For the next few hours, that was all they did—lay around and be lazy. South eventually migrated over to Connie’s bed and splayed across her lap, crushing her legs in the way she’d learned was relaxing for Connie and rambling about this and that. Outside the door, the muffled voices of their squadmates came and went, and they busied themselves, for a while, wondering idly what everyone else would get up to.

What a _relief_ it was, to have free time not owed to the Project. No beeping from the comm. bands still wrapped tight around their wrists, no alerts from the leaderboard or the Director…

For once, Connie even found that she didn’t feel the need to fill the time with work.

“It’s a fucking miracle,” South teased, when she expressed that fact. Connie rolled her eyes with a smile and dropped a pillow on her face for her trouble, which only lead to a half-hearted pillow fight that never truly started, and yet never quite ended.

This was a real break. And they were going to make the most of it.

The _Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot_ —otherwise known as the _Whiskey_ , or the _WTF_. The outside was bland and utilitarian, typical of UNSC architecture and blending into the grey expanse of the _Spire’s_ internal structures. Only the simple whiskey glass logo on the illuminated sign gave it away—well, that and the riot of voices and laughter that drifted out of the open doors.

And the drunken marines that left in packs.

If Connie had felt exposed in her t-shirt and jeans, she felt positively naked in the simple black dress she’d thrown on for their night at the bar. The leather jacket she’d pulled on over it at the last minute helped, but it was warm inside the _Whiskey_ and she was already sweltering ten minutes after they’d arrived. Time and alcohol would only make it worse; she knew that from experience.

Freelancers had slowly begun to filter into the bar a little after seven, weaving their way into the fabric of the atmosphere with laughter that was familiar and somewhat reassuring. Members of the lower squads she rarely saw took to tables of their own, rounds of drinks spread out across the surface, and gossip she had no part in nor knowledge of as wet on their lips as the alcohol in their glasses.

The Delta agents seemed… scattered, that much she did notice. Delta had never been a large squad and they’d seen more deaths than most; half of their roster of ten was gone, now that the Triplets had apparently dropped out of the program. Of those who remained, only the Miss. twins and Vermont had graced the _Whiskey_ , but they hung back, far away from each other and far away from the rest of the Freelancers.

She didn’t realise she was frowning until a fingertip pressed into the crease in her forehead, surprising her enough that it smoothed out in an instant.

“I know that face,” Wash said, as he pulled himself into the bar stool next to her and waved down the bartender. An ordered bottle of beer later, he continued, “What’s bothering you, Connie?”

Connie’s teeth dug into her lip. Over Wash’s shoulder, she watched as York stepped into the bar and made a beeline for Illinois, who was waving him over with his signature bottle of _Count May_ rum in his hand.

York had to take a chair from the Miss. twins to sit next to him.

“…the triplets,” Connie said, the weight of her own pause pressing at the back of her skull. “Did you know they’d left?”

A wave of relief swept over her when Wash’s face became awash with confusion, too. “They have? When?”

“I don’t know! Apparently ‘a while ago’, according to Mass, but it can’t have been _that_ long ago,” she said, gesticulating vaguely. “I talked to Ohio not more than… well, I don’t know, it was probably a little over a month ago, but that’s not _that_ long.”

“I have to say, I haven’t seen them around lately, but… you’re not wrong, that’s not that long ago,” Wash said, tapping the neck of his glass. “Did Mass say why they left?”

“According to zir, they all… dropped out?” She swirled the colourful alcohol in her glass around and around, watching the way it twisted into a miniature whirlpool. “But… something doesn’t sit right with me, about that.”

“A lot of things don’t sit right with you, Connie,” Wash said, elbowing her in the side. Connie rolled her eyes and elbowed him back. “We’ve been pretty busy. That’d explain us not realising they’d gone.”

“But it _doesn’t_ explain why they’d suddenly ‘drop out’. I didn’t even know dropping out was _possible_ , Wash.”

Wash nodded, half-way through a swig of his drink. “I gotta give you that one,” he said, as he set the bottle back down, “I wouldn’t have thought _Project Freelancer_ was really the kind of place that lets you just… drop out. You know,” he gave her a knowing look, “all things considered.”

“ _Exactly!_ ” Connie groaned and downed the remainder of her glass. “And even if it is possible—I don’t see _why_ they’d quit. Ohio is a giant ball of anxiety, sure, but she’s a very _stubborn_ giant ball of anxiety. I can’t imagine her just… _giving up_ like that.”

“Then… maybe they got kicked out?” Wash suggested.

The crease returned to Connie’s brow.

“But then _why_ tell people they dropped out?”

“Did they, though? Or is that just what Mass assumes happened? I mean,” he held his hands up, “I wouldn’t know either way, nobody ever tells me anything.”

Connie was muffling a laugh when a combat boot-clad foot appeared on her lap.

“What’re you two talking about?” South said, leaning her weight against the bar. Connie found her gaze trailing along the tensed muscles of South’s arm supporting her before she had the sense to stop herself. “Rookie’s got a point though, no one tells him shit. So that’s a point for,” she waved a hand vaguely in his direction, “whatever he’s saying.”

“Thanks, I think?”

“We’re talking about the triplets,” Connie said, turning her empty glass around in her grip. “ _Apparently_ they left. Either they dropped out or, as Wash just suggested, they were kicked out.”

“Those guys?” South said, before turning away just long enough to order a drink. “Wouldn’t be fuckin’ surprised if they were kicked out. They _were_ bottom of the fuckboard.”

“ _Please_ don’t call it that,” Wash said, his face twisting into a knot.

South flashed him a grin. “Too fucking late.”

Choosing to ignore the very existence of the word ‘fuckboard’, Connie said, “I guess? It’s… I don’t know. It came out of _nowhere_ and Ohio didn’t even say goodbye. We had _plans_ for the next shore leave we got, and I had to hear this second- or third-hand from _Mass_ of all people.”

“So, you’re really just feeling put out that they didn’t say anything about going away?” Wash said, giving the back of her hand a squeeze.

Connie hesitated, an objection caught on the tip of her tongue, then sighed. “…maybe, yeah.”

“Mischief, it’s the fucking _Director_ ,” South said, now nursing her drink, “they probably didn’t get two fucking seconds to contact _anyone_ before they were tossed planetside. The fucker didn’t even give you a day off for your planet getting glassed. He doesn’t have a soul.”

“I know, I know. It’s just—” Sighing, she shook her head. “Nevermind.”

“C’mon,” South said, sitting up properly to throw an arm around Connie’s shoulders. “This is our first shore leave in fucking _months._ We’re here to have _fun_ , not get even more depressed. Now, what I’m gonna do is buy us a round of drinks, then we’re going to sit here, _drink ‘em_ , forget about everything shitty going on, and _then_ I’m gonna challenge Lina to a drinking contest.”

“Ohhh no,” Wash said.

“Oh yes, rookie. Oh fucking yes,” South said, with a grin that bared her teeth. Raising her hand, she beckoned the bartender. “Another round of whatever these fuckers want.”

“…there is _one_ more thing, related to the Triplets,” Connie said, as the bartender left with the order. South groaned and went to open her mouth, but Connie beat her to it, “5 things nobody ever tells Wash. Go.”

South _snorted._ “Oh, this I can get behind. He’s… a dork.”

“Hey!” Wash said. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“One,” Connie said, barely muffling a giggle.

South tilted her head. “He’s… gullible.”

“Ohhh! _Two_.”

“I am not!”

“He has something in his teeth,” South said, gesturing with her glass.

 _Immediately_ , Wash’s hand flew to his mouth. “Wait, I do?”

As he raised his own drink and tried to look in his reflection for the non-existent piece of food, Connie could no longer hold back her laughter, “ _Three._ ”

Half of a new glass of gin later and Connie was melting into the upbeat atmosphere of the bar, the tension in her muscles falling away. Dragged away from her place at the bar by South, she tucked herself into the padded seats on one side of the row of thrown-together tables surrounded by members of Alpha and Beta alike.

Several of whom were now helping South and Carolina prepare for that drinking contest.

“Are we sure we’re safe to watch this? I feel like some of us are going to get wasted just from watching them,” Wash said, dramatic as he ever was and almost hitting Montana in the face with a flailing arm.

“ _Wash_ ,” York said, approaching while wielding two bottles of vodka, “they’re not gonna pry open your jaw and pour alcohol down your throat, for christ’s sake.”

“Speak for yourself, York,” Carolina said, tying her braid up into a bun. Wash made a face like a fish gasping for air before a smirk graced her lips. “I’m kidding, Wash. Still, I can’t vouch for South.”

“Waste of good alcohol!” South declared, returning to the table with a tray full of shot glasses. Setting them down with a sharp thunk. “Okay! We need a fuckin— independent adjudicator, or some shit. No, York, not you,” York’s mouth shut, “you have a fucking boner for the boss.”

“Gin would work,” Illinois said, raising a thick eyebrow. “Where’d she go anyway?”

“I think she said something about fresh air?” Connie said, sitting up on her knees to get a good look over the bar. The _Whiskey_ had thinned out a little, now; the Freelancers’ rowdy tendencies had scared off all but the most resilient few, and so it wasn’t hard to spot Virginia near the door.

Or the man with the helljumper skull on his bicep that punched her in the face.

Connie gasped and everyone’s heads turned, but by the time they did Virginia had jammed her knee into his balls. A chorus of ‘ouch!’es and ‘ _ooof_ ’s filled the room and someone even cheered as the guy crumpled in half from the hit, only to get shoved against the wall with an arm against his throat.

Virginia _hissed_ in his face, the way he flinched more whatever vitriol she spat than the actual spit that hit his skin.

Seconds later he was scrambling away with his tail between his legs and his hands over his balls, looking exactly as terrified as he should be.

Turning to the crowd now watching her, Virginia snapped an authoritative, “What are you looking at?” and everyone averted their eyes without a second thought.

Dropping into the seat opposite Connie, Virginia snatched up her drink, chugging more than half of what remained.

“Who _was_ that?” Connie asked, settling back down into her previous position with her legs tucked tightly beneath her. “Did he just— come up and _hit_ you? Out of nowhere?”

“Oh, no, he made sure to call me a traitorous bitch first,” Virginia said with the sort of nonchalance the sentence didn’t at all deserve. Taking another swig from her glass, she wiped her mouth. Her lip was split and bleeding. “He’s the brother of one of my old squadmates. Blames me for his death. Buys into the UNSC’s tall tales.”

“Shit, Is—” Illinois started, before correcting himself, “ _Gin_. That’s ridiculous.”

“Won’t be the last one, I’m sure,” she said with a shrug, tongue flicking over the cut and swiping away a bead of blood, chasing the iron with the bitter swill of alcohol. “Without the Project I’d be dead. I’ll take a few punches in exchange.”

That persistent crease returned to Connie’s brow, despite the best efforts of the alcohol in her system to deter it. Virginia was right—wrongly pinned with the crime of treason, she’d likely have been executed by the UNSC had they not allowed the Project to take her in. That wasn’t new information, not to her, but…

Almost everyone in the Project had a past. That wasn’t new, either; it was something that hung heavy at the back of her mind and coloured every doubt and question she’d had about the Project. Charges ranged in severity, of course. Wash had been charged with and admitted to assault of a superior officer. Montana had simply been accused of obstructing operations through reckless, if well-meaning, behaviour. South… well, the Project got there before they pinned anything concrete on her or her brother, their evidence lacking. And so on.

The Triplets had definitely been on the lower end of the spectrum of severity but…

Leaving would still reinstate the charges.

Why would they drop out with _prison time_ on the table?

The moment that thought crossed her mind was the very same moment that the table in front of her wobbled dangerously under the weight of Louisiana. Frantic hands reached out to steady clattering glasses as she pulled out her signature sword, which she’d apparently smuggled off the ship, and started waving it around.

“Let me at ‘em, Gin, I’ll fuck ‘em up for you!” she said, oblivious to the people ducking out of the way of the blade.

“How did she get that off the ship?!”

“Where was she _hiding_ that for us not to see it until now?”

Virginia was biting back laughter, leaning back in her chair to stay out of range. “Louisi, you don’t have to— _careful!_ ”

Too late. Louisiana planted her foot down on open air and hit the floor with a painful sounding thud and reverberating clunk.

A single beat of silence later and the bar erupted in laughter.

Connie’s train of thought was lost.

South beat Carolina by the quite frankly terrifying margin of ‘Carolina willingly gave in’.

A little over ten shots down the line with no sign of wavering from South and Carolina threw up her hands, stepping back from the table. She didn’t feel sick, she insisted, but she could see that South wasn’t going to get there any time soon—better to admit her limit now than to cover the table with it later.

And then she excused herself to the bathroom.

South grinned with an edge of drunken swagger, leaning back with her arms folded behind her head, but she held herself steady and her voice didn’t so much as quiver as she spoke. “I’ve been drinking harder shit than that since I was 16.”

“That’s concerning. You know that, right?” York said, prompting a snort and an open hand. Groaning, he slapped a couple of cR transfer chips he’d won in their last poker game into her palm. “Shoulda known better than to bet against the Russian winning.”

“Это не русский. Это дерьмовое детство _,_ ” South said, fist closing around the chips.

“Was that a threat? Hey, hey, North,” York slapped North on the bicep with the back of his hand, but North only stood up and gathered up the abandoned shot glasses. “Hey, c’mon dude, you’d tell me if she was threatening me, right? Hey, hey, North—”

Connie could just about see the way North was biting back laughter as he walked away, to the continuing chorus of York’s pleas for help.

South snickered and met Connie’s gaze out of the corner of her eye, winking at her.

Connie hid her giggle in her drink.

By the end of the glass, she was pleasantly buzzed. By half-way through the next, she was tipsy.

Her jacket lay discarded next to South, the bare skin now exposed raised in goosebumps where South casually draped an arm around her shoulders. The way she tucked herself into South’s side wasn’t _unusual_ , for them; Connie had a habit of lounging over her friends, or vice versa, but… something _felt_ different. Something amplified by the alcohol and stripped inhibitions.

A couple of hours into the evening and _everything_ felt a little looser. Lines between squads blurred and conversations melded together, people interjecting wherever they saw a reason or opportunity.

York had told the same story at least three times in slightly different ways, which was only encouraged by a laughing Illinois and North’s shaking head.

Montana was in an animated discussion with Wash from where they sat in Louisiana’s lap—whose sword had since been taken by Virginia and now sat propped between her legs, out of harm’s way. Virginia herself was laughing with Carolina, tales of their respective teams’ antics causing the tables to flare up into debates and refutations and ‘I can explain’s that derailed every other conversation for minutes at a time.

Connie even found herself flapping her hands alongside her laughter, and only felt a _little_ self-conscious.

At some point, South’s arm drifted down to wrap around her waist.

If anyone asked, the flush that rose to her cheeks was from the alcohol. Nothing else. Stop giving her _looks_ , Washington.

The point where she knew she was honest-to-god _drunk_ was about the time someone discovered the bar had a karaoke machine and, without hesitation, her hand shot up to volunteer. Or, more accurately, _drunk_ Connie’s hand shot up to volunteer. Sober Connie would like to think she’d have a stronger sense of self-preservation.

At least drunk Connie decided to take Wash down with her.

And, well, it couldn’t be said that they didn’t _commit_ , once they had the microphone in hand. There was off-key singing and dramatic flair in equal measure, and _everyone_ was watching the spectacle. York was recording them and, even drunk, Connie made a mental note to delete that footage later. That was the kind of ammunition York did _not_ deserve to have on hand.

Especially once Wash, in a pitiful recreation of Louisiana’s earlier actions, tried and failed to hop up onto the nearby table for a dramatic solo. Him nearly cracking his head open on the corner of a chair was the first cue to start winding down. He was still insisting he was fine as Maine, who had been called to collect ‘their boyfriend’ (in South’s words), picked him up and took him back to their bunk.

A few minutes later, she and South decided it was about time they followed their lead.

“Y’know you’re quite the performer, mischief,” South teased as they wandered through the empty halls of the _Spire_ , Connie’s abandoned jacket tossed over South’s shoulder.

Connie jabbed her in the side with her elbow, but giggled. “Shut up. That was _terrible_. Fun, but terrible. And _now_ ,” she said, sighing dramatically, “I have to break into York’s data storage and delete a video! No one can ever see that!”

“Like that isn’t your usual idea of fucking fun, mischief,” South said, playfully retaliating with a weak shove that put herself more off-balance than it did Connie. “And, hey, that video gets out? Own it. You look fucking gorgeous and you were having fun. Anyone gives you shit, stab ‘em.”

She even mimed a jabbing motion, for good measure.

Connie gave her a stronger, but just as ineffectual, shove. “I looked _ridiculous_.”

“You can look ridiculous and gorgeous at the same time, babe,” South said, so casually that it took Connie another second to register the final word.

A new wave of heat ran to her face in the very same moment that she tripped over her own feet.

“Oh, shit, mischief—”

A hand grabbed onto hers, but it was too late—gravity had taken over.

“ _Shit_ ,” South grunted, fumbling to get her hands flat on the ground. The weight pressing on Connie’s chest released a second later, dangling strands of hair brushing against her face. “You okay mischief?”

“Yeah, yeah I—” Connie started, only for her tongue to twist into a knot as her eyes focused. South’s face was mere inches from her own. Her nose crinkled from the smell of the alcohol on South’s breath, just as strong as hers.

And then South sat up, all but straddling Connie’s waist with her head tilted, a brow raised.

It wasn’t a view she hadn’t had before. Sparring often saw South sat triumphantly over her, dishevelled and rosy-cheeked from the fight, in her colour-coded tank. Here, she was muddled by alcohol, not action; here, she was in her own clothes, in a shirt with buttons that had come apart to reveal the snake’s head that curved up into her sternum, coloured in by galaxies as vibrant as her personality, not a uniform.

Here, with the context shifted and her nerves pushed aside by liquid confidence, Connie spluttered out a, “I wanna kiss you right now,” that stunned her just as much as it did South.

South’s jaw fell slack, just for a second, and then a lopsided grin spread across her face. “What was that?”

“I… want to kiss you right now,” Connie repeated, her heart pounding a mile a minute. Was she really—? “Can I kiss you?”

“Fuck yes you fucking c— _mmph!_ ”

Connie’s lips crashed against hers, quick and clumsy and _wanting_. Connie threw her weight against South and she toppled back without resistance, Connie’s knees digging into her sides and her hands framing South’s head.

South could have thrown Connie off in a second, her guard down and her reflexes off, but she just lay there, pressing back into Connie’s kiss with matching fervour. One of her own hands wrapped around Connie’s hip as teeth caught her bottom lip, following the seam to the hem of the dress that threatened to rise, holding it down. The other found the back of her skull, curling into her hair.

Only air could force Connie to pull away.

South licked her lips, looking up at her with a glint in her eyes that Connie knew well enough.

“…room,” Connie said, swallowing.

“Damn fucking right,” South said, hooking her arms under Connie’s ass and dragging herself up to her feet. Locking her ankles behind South’s back, Connie held on tight.

She was kissing her again before they even turned the next corner.

Connie keyed in the bunk’s door code blind, pressed back against the metal by South’s weight and eager lips working their way down her jaw, her throat, sucking at her collarbone. The door slid open and South stumbled, tripping Connie-first into the darkness.

The soft hiss of the closing door was echoed by faint panting.

Connie’s eyes adjusted quickly to the dark. South hovered above her, the faint glow of luminescent ink mapping out the exposed skin of her chest. Nimble fingers trailed the length of the exposed serpent until they came to the edge of her open shirt, ghosting along the hem.

“Couple fuckin’ things,” South said, her voice low and breathy. Connie hummed in acknowledgement, those fingers following the line of her shirt to the swoop of her collarbone. “One, don’t expect fuckin’ shit from the girl downstairs, she’s fuckin’ useless at the best of times let alone after that much liquor. Two, do you abso-fucking-lutely want to do this? This isn’t just the dicking booze?”

Legs still wrapped tight around South’s waist, Connie rolled them over and pinned her back to the floor. South followed her oh so readily, face split with that lopsided grin and looking like there was nowhere she’d rather be than beneath her.

“I’ve wanted to do this for _weeks_ , South,” Connie said, her dress already bunched up around her hips. “Do _you_ want to do this?” Her thumb brushed over the curve of South’s lips. Her knees dug sharply into her sides. “You drank more than me.”

“ _Fuck_ yes,” South _moaned_ , shifting between Connie’s legs. Blue eyes met brown and South, serious as Connie had ever heard her, mumbled a, “Thought you’d never fucking ask.”

Connie kissed her again, before she could overthink the words.

What followed was _heated_ and _clumsy_ —tension built up over months and months released like the snap of an elastic band pulled too taut. South was loose and pliant, her melting point the warmth of Connie’s lips and the heat of skin against skin. Gone were the sharp edges and fighting words, dulled down to smooth contours and half-hearted teasing, at ease under Connie’s mouth and hands and hips.

There was giggling and tangled limbs and faces flushed red. There were dark marks sucked into skin and bitten lips and crumpled clothes. There was the brush of skin against skin and the pressure of fingers against muscle and warmth of lips against pulses.

There was the comforting weight of South laid with her head on her chest, arms wrapped around her and their legs knotted together. There was the reassuring sound of her breathing, even and steady.

Connie fell asleep to that sound.

And awoke to the pounding of her head.

The first time her eyes opened, it was almost ten in the morning. The brief spike of anxiety that she’d missed her morning slot faded quickly under the throbbing pain of a hangover so rough she imagined she now knew how it felt to get shot in the face by a tank. Vaguely aware that the weight on her torso was gone, she pulled up the abandoned covers and took refuge beneath them.

Being awake could go fuck itself, she decided, and went back to sleep.

The second time, it was closing in on two in the afternoon.

Bolstering herself with a countdown, she dragged the covers away from her face and found it blissfully dark. Her head felt a little less like she had taken a Scorpion shell and come out the other side, but the glass of water, snack bar, and pair of pills she found on the bedside were more than welcome.

Within a few minutes, the pain began to subside.

She made a note to thank South late—

Connie’s eyes widened.

_South. Oh fuck._

Suddenly aware of how bare she was under the covers, she scrambled to drag on a fresh pair of underwear and a bra. There was no adjoining wet room here on the _Spire_ , but a front-facing camera was as good as any mirror for showing her the hickeys that decorated her collarbone and upper chest.

A wave of relief washed over her at the fact South had had the sense to mark her somewhere she could _hide_ , but it was quickly followed by a wave of _holy shit I fucked South_ that made blood rush to her face.

Poking one of the bruises for good measure, the faint throb of pain confirmed it was real.

There was no blank spot in her memory. The alcohol took its payment in the pain of the morning after, not recollection of the night before—she remembered it all, remembered the _confidence_ the same drink that was now punishing her had instilled in her. The way that South gave herself so happily, the way she _felt_ —

It had been everything she knew it could be, even as drunken and clumsy as it all was.

Slapping the thoughts down, she buried her head in her pillow.

This wasn’t usually her style. What was the protocol for a situation like this? _Was_ there a protocol for having a one-night stand with one of your squad-mates, who was also one of your best friends and roommate? _Was_ it a one-night stand? Connie hadn’t been lying when she said she’d been wanting this for weeks, but South had been as drunk as she was, did she remember that? Did she remember, or even _mean_ , her own response?

Connie groaned into her pillow.

It was another hour before she willed herself to get dressed and head for the showers.

Unlike the _Invention_ , the showers on the _Spire_ were individual stalls—much to Connie’s relief. No prying eyes could catch sight of the hickies decorating her skin as she washed off last night’s sweat and felt her tension washing down the drain with the water. Only after she was fully clothed did she step back out to the mirrors to handle her hair.

“So, you _haven’t_ gone AWOL,” teased a voice behind her, all but scaring her straight out of her skin. Carolina chuckled as she turned around, raising a hand. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

Waving it off, Connie said, “Not this time. I just got hit a little harder than I expected.”

“No kidding,” Carolina said, stripping off and folding her workout clothes up on the benches outside the stalls. Connie averted her eyes—nakedness felt different, this morning. “I wasn’t sure I believed South when she said you were still in bed.”

Connie’s heart skipped. “Where is she, anyway?”

“Recreation room, the last I saw,” Carolina said, opening a stall door. “She’s showing York up at air hockey.”

Connie couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course she is.”

South wasn’t so much showing York up as she was annihilating him, Connie found. So much so that he threw his hands up in exaggerated relief when South threw down her puck upon Connie’s arrival, abandoning the game in favour of what Connie could only describe as fussing over her.

“I’m _fine_ , South,” she assured her, trying not to show how her standing so close made her heart race. “I just needed the sleep. Thank you for the water and pills, they helped.”

“You were like a fuckin’ zombie this morning, mischief. Me getting up woke you but then you just turned yourself info a fucking burrito and went back to sleep,” South said, brushing her hair behind her ear. Connie struggled not to lean fully into her hand.

“Well, I’m not a zombie now,” she said, reaching up to brush South’s fringe out of her eyes. It had all but lost its colour. “I think your shower this morning was the final straw for the purple.”

Groaning, South blew at the offending hair. “Ugh, yeah I fuckin’ know.”

“I can help you re-do it,” Connie said, the words slipping free before she could stop herself. If South seemed to perk up, she wrote it off as her imagination. “Come on. Let’s go turn one of the sinks purple.”

South’s face split in that confident grin of hers and Connie’s heart kicked up again.

It was almost unbearable, how _normal_ South acted, even in the close proximity the action of dyeing her hair forced upon them. Connie’s heart had forgotten what it felt like to beat normally but South seemed at ease; if there was any inner turmoil, then nothing she did betrayed it. She chatted and laughed and complained like she always did, pulling faces at the stink of the dye and the tedium of waiting, as if she hadn’t done this countless times before.

It was reassuring and unnerving in equal measure.

“I only accepted that I was even _into_ her a couple months ago,” Connie said that night, sitting in Wash and Maine’s room while the others hit the _Whiskey_ again. She tossed another Droplet into Wash’s mouth from across the room. “And before you even _think_ about it, if you say ‘I told you so’ I’m going to aim everywhere _but_ your mouth.”

“I didn’t say anything!” he said through a mouthful of acid burn.

“I can see it in your eyes, Washington.”

“You’ve already admitted I was right, that’s enough for me,” he said. The next droplet he threw landed down her shirt. “Oops. But— okay, so let me get this straight. You, after months of pining and an entire night of making eyes at South, had sex with her and are now agonising over the fact she’s… acting totally normal?”

“Yes!” Plucking the sweet free, she tossed it back and hit him dead between the eyes. “ _Weirdly_ normal. She hasn’t mentioned it at all. And— okay, at least us fucking hasn’t ruined our friendship, right? But I don’t know what it actually _means_. I don’t even know what I _want_ it to mean! I don’t know if this is the time or place for anything _serious_ , but I’d like to at least _acknowledge_ what happened, y’know?”

“Have _you_ mentioned it?” Wash said. Another droplet hit his nose. “Okay, stupid question.” 

“She’s had casual flings with people from the Project before,” Connie mused. Tilting her head, she caught the next Droplet in her mouth. She was still sucking on it when she continued, “Maybe it _was_ just a one-night thing for her.”

“ _Or_ she’s actually into you too like I’ve _also_ been saying for months,” Wash said. This time, the droplet hit his chin. “Hey, you’re here asking me for input, I’m giving it. Not my fault you can’t see it.”

“That’s hilarious coming from _you_ ,” Connie said, huffing playfully. “You’re even more clueless than I am!”

Wash snorted. “What does _that_ mean?”

“I don’t have the time to try and make you recognise that Maine is smitten with you when I’m dealing with my own feelings, Washington,” she retorted, landing the next Droplet square in his mouth.

Wash spluttered, coughing it back into his hand.

“ _What?_ ” he squeaked, looking back over his shoulder at Maine, who was sitting reading on the bed.

Maine peered over their data-pad and shrugged, with their brow quirked in a way Connie had come to recognise as amused.

“ _What?!_ ” Wash repeated, another octave up.

Connie doubled over laughing.

The next day, it was South’s turn to be so hungover she didn’t make it out of bed until past midday. What had happened, Connie learned third-hand, was York—or, more specifically, York’s goading. Somehow, he’d convinced the twins to run a drinking contest against _each_ _other_ , a feat which resulted in a tie, an argument about if South’s drinks from the night before meant she won, and a pair of extremely hungover twins.

Meaning it wasn’t exactly the best time to waltz up to her and ask where their relationship stood.

As it was, South was just functional enough for them to make a last-minute trip around the commissary for any extra supplies they wanted to stock up on before they re-boarded the _Invention_ that evening.

After that, everything was swept up into a whirlwind of pre-slipspace preparations.

Beta, Gamma and Delta squads were all quickly hustled off to the _Invention’s_ cryogenic bays, where they would spend their time in slipspace asleep to minimise resource waste.

Of course, Mass still managed to find time to send Connie a message reminding her to get her half of the ever-delayed TURNCOAT done before ze woke up. Of course ze did.

See, Alpha squad didn’t go to sleep during jumps.

The Director had deemed the time spent in slipspace to be time that they shouldn’t waste, so slipspace jumps meant Alpha squad stayed awake and were assigned an ever-more brutal schedule of training. The first wave of equipment had been introduced during a jump, for example, and so it came as no surprise to Connie when South, and some of the others, were taken aside to have their units upgraded.

Nor was she surprised when she was presented with brand new files to decrypt and analyse, destroying any chance that she’d complete the work Mass wanted her to.

What _was_ surprising was the contents of those files. Though the packet was designated as a part of an ongoing collection of data related to the insurrectionist network, it seemed to contain information about communications and cell activity that were entirely new to Connie.

Not that it was _entirely_ unheard of to be handed data she was unfamiliar with. Beta did a lot of intel acquisition for the Project; while Alpha tackled the largest and most important of such missions, Beta still handled the majority. It was entirely possible that they had recently run a mission and the data had been withheld until the jump.

At least, that was what Connie told herself. Asking the Director only got her the answer, “Where we acquired the data does not matter, Agent Connecticut. Your job is to decrypt and analyse, not ask questions.”

It was all she could do to bite back a snide ‘analysis requires asking questions, _sir_ ’. She knew better than to push her luck.

When he left, she found her eyes drawn to the cycling board in the corner of the room.

It ended at 44, now.

The next time she saw South, they were in slipspace.

Everyone else was asleep, from Command to the Agents to the support staff and soldiers. The _Invention_ was reduced from a city to a ghost town, population ten. Unnaturally quiet and still, it gave the sprawling ship an atmosphere unlike anything Connie had ever experienced before.

“You know, I understand what Louisiana says about this place feeling haunted now,” Connie said, tucked up to South’s side on the rec room couch. The night cycle had been active for a while, casting the ship in darkness. “It’s so… quiet. It feels wrong, like we’re somewhere we’re not supposed to be.”

“No one’s supposed to be on this shithole ship,” South said, arm slung around Connie’s shoulder like it was nothing. Like they’d already talked about what happened and Connie wasn’t screaming inside, wondering where they stood.

“It’s your first real jump awake, isn’t it?” North asked, York half-asleep in his lap but still idly turning the knobs of a puzzle cube. Connie and Wash both nodded. “It is a little strange. But you get used to it. The peace and quiet can actually be quite nice.”

“It’s something beyond peace and quiet,” Wash said, resting against a sleeping Maine. “Maine seems to like it, but it really gives me the creeps.”

“You won’t even be thinking about it by the end of the jump, promise.”

“Until then, enjoy the existential dread,” York contributed sleepily, his words slurring together. North shook his head and smoothed his hair.

“Agent York has the right idea,” added Florida, his head popping in around the doorframe. Connie jumped. “We could be the last humans alive in the universe, and we would never know until we came out the other side. Isn’t that a fun thought experiment?”

“…I don’t think that’s quite what York meant, Florida,” North said, brow-line knitted.

Florida simply smiled and disappeared down the hall, whistling as he went.

There was a long beat of silence.

“Well that’s going to be my nightmare fuel for the next week,” Wash said, eventually.

“Florida, or the idea of being the last humans alive in the universe?”

“Yes.”

The small group fell quickly back into quiet, companionable conversation, after that, but… somehow, the arm wrapped around Connie felt like it was holding onto her a little bit tighter.

Still, they were almost an hour into some trash movie that York had thrown on—and promptly fallen asleep during—before South nudged Connie and whispered, “Hey, mischief?”

Connie opened one eye, half-asleep with her head on South’s shoulder. “Mmhm?”

“I wanna talk to you. Not like— right here right fucking now or anything,” South said, jerking her head towards the other agents in various stages of unconsciousness, “but— after training tomorrow?”

For what felt like the thousandth time in only a few days, Connie’s heart rate spiked.

All those hours agonising about the fact she didn’t seem to want to talk about it and the _second_ she _did_ , she almost forgot how to speak.

“Uh, mischief?” South said, raising a brow at her. “You okay there?”

“Yeah, yeah, just— half asleep,” Connie said, not quite lying. “Yeah, of course. After training sounds good.”

South grinned and, this time, it was more like Connie forgot how to _breathe_. “After training it fuckin’ is.”

There was one problem.

Connie now had to think about exactly what it was she _wanted_ out of this.

Days of waiting for _something_ to break and force the conversation and there she was, still as unsure of what outcome she was hoping for as she’d been when she was sat on the floor of Wash’s room. Somehow, she hadn’t thought about the fact that once _South_ wanted to talk, that she would have to be ready to talk _too._

It made focusing on her work difficult, to the say the least.

Usually work was a distraction, something that she could delve into to cut off spiralling thoughts before they could enter freefall, but that wasn’t an option here, and the work itself was _frustrating_. New data with no background information provided, thrust on her mere hours before a jump—she had very little will to start it in the first place.

So, pulling up a section of TURNCOAT she could code and re-code with her eyes closed, she didn’t.

Instead, she… dipped her toe, into the spiral.

She liked South. She _really_ liked South.

If you asked her, objectively, if she wanted to date her? The answer was an unequivocal yes. She wanted to be with her, she wanted to be with Agent South Dakota (Natasha Katina, her _name_ was Natasha Katina).

But—well, there was a but.

She wanted to be with her, but was this the place? The time?

It felt like the last few months of Connie’s life had been layered in stark reminders that the war was raging as violently as it ever was, that nothing was as permanent as it seemed. Entire planets were wiped out in a matter of hours. Millions upon millions of people died with every passing battle and even out here, further from the front lines, agents _died._ Rhode Island, Tennessee, Minnesota, all since the leaderboard had gone up—and that didn’t even count all of those that had _nearly_ died.

What if one of _them_ died? Wouldn’t being together just… make it worse, for whoever was left behind?

Or— or what if one of them was kicked out? If that _was_ what had happened to the Triplets—and that seemed more likely to her, with every spare thought devoted to the conundrum—then who was to say it wouldn’t happen to others? The leaderboard had always felt like a measure of an agent’s worth, and while Connie wasn’t exactly at the bottom like the Triplets… she wasn’t at the very _top_ , either.

Maybe it wasn’t a _logical_ fear, but…

It was about the uncertainty, wasn’t it? There wasn’t a way to tie this up in a neat little bow, no file to read that gave her at least _some_ of the answers she was looking for. This was an unknown.

She’d never been very good at handling unknowns.

Training had never felt so long as it did that day.

Their suits had been upgraded with artificial gravity boots that let them lock themselves to surfaces at will, horizontal and vertical alike, which took more than a little getting used to. Hours of what was meant to be a multi-part training session were dedicated to acclimatising to the strange feeling they produced when used, and to navigating on strangely angled walls and floors.

Wash almost fell off the ceiling.

Connie couldn’t help but laugh—after she and Maine (mostly Maine) caught him.

Unit training was thus postponed to the following day, where Carolina’s brand-new adaptive camouflage unit could be given the time it deserved on the floor and there’d be less risk of them rushing the dome shield. Apparently, the new upgrade had come with some… design flaws.

“Utah nearly _suffocated_ to death! That’s a _little_ more than a design flaw!” Wash had squawked as the twins idly ran over the report.

“Eh, who _hasn’t_ been suffocated once or twice?” South had said, to a wave of raised hands.

Walking on solid ground was a challenge of its own after spending hours at various degrees of horizontal; Connie’s legs felt something akin to jelly when stripped from the support of her armour. A couple of wobbly steps later and South made her wrap an arm around her waist with a laugh.

“C’mon mischief,” she said, ruffling her hair, “where’d you want to go?”

Somewhere… quiet. Somewhere private, impartial, away from the others. Somewhere like…

“How’s the observation deck sound?”

“Sounds fuckin’ great to me.”

If she was honest, Connie held onto South’s waist for longer than she had to.

Like everywhere else on the ship, the observation deck was deserted. Their footsteps seemed to echo louder than they had before, though Connie knew that was a trick played by the strange atmosphere.

Beyond the expanse of glass usually dotted with the bright lights of distant stars, there was only an inky blackness.

A true void.

“Y’know,” South said, as they sat down, “I always used to fuckin’ think slipspace would be like faster-than-light shit in the old movies. Y’know the type, the shit-stains of stars smearing across the glass as you blew past it? But nope. Pitch fucking black. Eerie as fuck.”

“Eerie is a word for it,” Connie said, a shiver running down her spine. Fingernails caught at the edge of her scarred palm until she clenched her hand into a fist. “We’re not even in the same dimension as the stars. That’s…”

“Want me to put up a false display?”

“Please.”

With a few hand gestures, the view was replaced by the illusion of a cloudy sky. Connie exhaled.

There was a long beat of silence.

“Sooo…” South said, leaning back on her hands. “We fucked.”

Connie swallowed, starting to roll the plastic-coated end of her pants’ drawstring between her fingers. “We… certainly did.”

“And— okay, look, are you _okay_ with that? With what happened?” South said, features suddenly moulded by an uncharacteristic seriousness that Connie had seen only a few times before. “You were super fucking enthusiastic at the time but y’know, I’ve had hook-ups I was all for and regretted later, it happens. And you’ve kinda been quiet about it so—I just wanna make sure you’re good.”

Connie breathed a startled little laugh.

Of course. Of _course_ she’d been thinking the same damn thing she’d been thinking, of _course_ she’d noticed that Connie wasn’t talking about it either, of _course_ she was worrying just as much as Connie had been.

“I— shit, South, I’d… I’d been thinking the same thing about _you_. Or— not the same-same thing, but… you hadn’t said a word about it, and you’ve been acting so _normal_ —” Connie said, tugging sharply on the drawstring, feeling the way it recoiled.

“Yeah, and you were getting fucking goosebumps every time I fucking touched you,” South said, as Connie felt heat rise to her cheeks. “What I’m trying to figure out here is if they were _good_ goosebumps.”

“They were good goosebumps, don’t worry. I…” Connie took a deep breath, the drawstring tangled around her fingers, “I don’t regret that night at all. Me saying that I’d wanted you for weeks wasn’t drunken exaggeration, it was… drunken _confidence._ ”

South’s grin cracked her serious expression. “Weeks, huh? I’ve been flirting with you for _months_ , y’know that right, mischief?”

“…hindsight is everything,” Connie said, unable to stop herself from smiling, “and— well, I guess I was in… denial. Of a sort. Even now I’m… not entirely sure where to go, from here. I like you—”

“Like-like me?” South said, the grin now positively shit-eating.

Connie playfully shoved her shoulder. “Shut up, you,” she teased. “I _like_ you, but… okay, I don’t want to assume anything, but— this is my thought process.” Taking a breath, she tugged the string taut. “I don't know if this is really the time or the place for… for this, for relationships. This line of work… agents have _died_ , South, and the war's not as far away as it seems out here.”

“But that’s exactly fucking why this _is_ the time and place for this shit, y'know?” South said, sitting up and gesticulating wildly. “Life's fucking short. No one knows if we're gonna see the other side of this, yeah, but _fuck_ , I wanna _live_ while I can! I want to have _fun_ , I want to cause havoc, I want to make my mark and I want to shoot my shot with the cheeky, clever, gorgeous fucking hacker who’s just my brand of chaos! And hey,” she held up her hands, “you say the word and I back the fuck off, never mention it again, but if we're gonna risk our lives for this place then why _not_ make the best of it?”

Connie blinked.

It was exactly the opposite of everything she’d been thinking and put so simply, in the way only South could. No less existential, no less built on the fragility of their lives—and yet emphatically _hopeful_.

“…I suppose that’s true,” she said, the string knotted around her finger.

“You’re _fun_ , mischief, I _like_ you, we spend lots of fuckin’ time together for a reason,” South said, reaching over and taking her hand. “God knows shit can’t get serious here, but who’s to say we can’t make the most of what we got and hey, if we make it out of this shitshow alive, then who knows what could happen? But right now, all it has to be is some _fun_ , y’know?"

Connie looked at their hands.

South’s calloused trigger finger traced over the lines in her palm, idly, as if she didn’t realise she was doing it. Goosebumps climbed Connie’s arm, the light brown skin rising up in pinpricks.

South was right. Of course she was right.

“…okay then… yeah,” Connie said, interlinking their fingers. “Okay.”

“Shit, really?” South said, sitting up a little straighter with that grin Connie loved so much back on her face. “Fuck, if spewing fucking feelings like last night's alcohol actually works, I should try that more often!”

“ _Gross_ , South!”

“It’s accurate!”

“You’re lucky that's one of the things I like about you,” Connie said, giving her hand a squeeze. “Waiting to see what creative swear or metaphor you'll come up with next. That and well… a lot of other things.”

“Like the way I kick your ass when we spar?” South said, head cocked and a cheeky glint in her eye.

“We’re _tied_ , last I checked. And I think it’s _you_ who enjoys _me_ kicking _your_ ass a little bit too much, actually,” Connie said, lifting their linked hands to poke her in the chest for added emphasis.

“…yeah y’know what I’m not even gonna fucking deny that one. What can I say? I’m fucking gay as dicks,” South said, winking at her. “You sure proved you were my fucking type the other night.”

“What can _I_ say? I like being on top,” Connie hummed, playful little smirk on her lips as she leaned over until she could feel South’s breath on her skin.

South closed the distance before she could and, _oh_ , there was nothing clumsy about the kiss that followed. Connie scrambled into her lap so as not to crane her neck, but the kiss was firm, and steady, and if Connie had held _any_ lingering doubts then they were all washed away.

When they pulled back, South was still grinning.

“Y’know, this is the _best_ fucking time to get together,” she said, arms wrapping around Connie’s waist.

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm. ‘Cause we’ve still got like over a _week_ in the slipstream, no fucking missions, no fucking bullshit from the Director to deal with, more free time…” South listed, fiddling with the hem of Connie’s shirt. “Lots of time to ourselves.”

“When we’re not stuck training,” Connie said.

“Eh, fuck training! What’s Carolina gonna do? Drag us to the training floor?”

“Probably!”

“Wait, fuck, you’re right, she did it to York once.”

Connie laughed, her head falling against South’s shoulder. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You fuckin’ love it though.”

She did. She really did.


	7. Illuminating

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art by artsilon/mercysewerpyro](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f1c36bd253e4d7c10d9c95aa85de3d24/322c09f6a52350d3-f1/s640x960/a668a5fb687873b186acf9920f376715216857ec.png)

Luminous-VI proved to be _exactly_ the hotbed of Insurrectionist activity that they had expected, and more.

One of the ever-decreasing number of human-occupied systems in the Outer Colonies, their trust in the UNSC was at an all-time low, and it wasn’t exactly hard to see why. The military had all but abandoned the system, withdrawing their forces from everything but the bare essentials needed to maintain some kind of authority, in order to focus on the Inner Colonies.

That reduced UNSC presence had turned it into a petri-dish for insurrectionist sentiments; no one was inclined to turn away the cells that travelled from further afield to coordinate with those growing closer to home.

It was far from an unfamiliar tale. Connie could see her own home in the colonies that the _Invention_ now hovered over like some omnipresent eye, watching and waiting. She could see it in the way the cities held themselves together with markets that stretched like veins through the streets, the lifeblood of a population abandoned by those meant to protect it. She could see it in the ramshackle facilities thrown together by Renegade Sunrise, the local insurrectionist radicals, to house the incoming flock.

She could see it in the young soldiers loaned to the Project as simulation troopers and backup, desperate to do _something,_ but hesitant to fight faces as familiar to them as the streets they occupied.

War did funny things to a community.

Sometimes it made Connie want to scream.

“It was always a point of contention, in my family,” she said in hushed whispers beneath the covers, the words caught in the space between her and South. With their heads rested together on the pillow, they may as well have been in their own little world. “Me and my brother would talk about it. We both knew something was wrong, but we… we could never agree on what to do about it. The war…”

She trailed off.

“Always struck me as fucking selfish.” South’s fingers combed through Connie’s hair. “Sure, the UNSC is a pile of mouldy fucking dicks, whatever, that’s the fucking military for you—but the fuck is fighting them supposed to do? Let the Covenant kill us all faster so we don’t have to suffer ‘em?”

“Maybe,” Connie mumbled, focusing on the sensation of fingernails against her scalp and the sound of South’s breathing. “Even now, sometimes it… it feels like we’re doing the Covenant’s job for them.”

Silence the weight of a world fell over the room.

South’s lips pressed to Connie’s forehead.

For every similarity, however, there was a stark, glaring difference.

Such differences became most apparent around the time they began to realise the situation in Luminous-VI was much more complicated than they had initially anticipated.

“ _Y’know, this is exactly the kind of trashy fucking place I’d_ love _to hit up if we ever got actual fucking shore leave_ ,” South said, a pillar of shadow on a fire escape barely stable enough to hold the weight of her armour. “ _Look at all these clubs. No wonder this shithole is called Trance, the flashing lights could certainly fucking put you in one._ ”

“ _That lighting is playing havoc with my optical suite_ ,” North complained, idly, from his vantage point high above the crossroads that Connie and South were positioned at.

“ _No fucking shit it is, North. This city is literally a fucking purple spiral from the sky._ ”

“Do you still have a visual on the target building, North?”

“ _I have visual, but my HUD’s attempts to compensate for the strange lighting has all but made South’s IFF signature unreadable._ ”

“ _Fucking told you they shouldn’t’ve fucking rainbow colour coded the damn things. Yellow for friendly, red for enemy, its fucking simple! Fucking cockshit idiots._ ”

“Alright, alright,” Connie said, now struggling to suppress the laughter in her voice, “let’s _try_ and keep the frequency clear except for information relevant to the mission.”

South didn’t bother to hide the grin in hers. “ _That was totally fucking relevant and you know it, babe._ _Besides, nothing’s happened for the last fucking hour._ ”

She wasn’t wrong. They’d seen no sign of the Insurrectionist gathering that was supposed to be taking place at the run-down club on the corner of the sector. The assignment was to watch and gather information, with strict orders not to attack. The ultimate goal was to install a variety of bugs to access the kind of intel that wasn’t shared over communications.

It was exactly the kind of mission South hated and Connie could see it in every shift of her shadow, hear it in the impatience in her voice. What Connie _couldn’t_ see was Command’s justification for sending her. South was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a reconnaissance agent—no matter _how_ often they filed her under stealth ops.

“Give it time,” Connie said aloud, whilst typing a message on their private channel. <I’ll make up for the boredom tonight, promise.>

All she got back was a single: < ;3 >

Another half hour passed before the trickle of people started, all arriving from different directions but homing in on the same, semi-abandoned club on the end of the row. Here, the lights were an advantage—South’s armour blended seamlessly into the purple-tinted shadows and Connie’s melted into the brick walls she stood between, invisible to those passing by.

For a few minutes everything went exactly as Connie expected. North was able to count the heat signatures gathering in the club and Connie made note of their organisation; the way they arrived, the potential security in place…

And then everything kind of went to hell.

North noticed first. “ _Heads up, got a couple more heat signatures coming along the alley underneath South’s position_.”

Connie squinted and her HUD zoomed in on dark figures moving in the alley opposite, but with the strange lighting it was hard to make out anything distinctive about them besides their dark clothes and mirrored movements.

“I see them,” she said. “South?”

South’s status light flashed green. She saw them.

“ _I’ve got more signatures, coming from the north side,_ ” North said. _“Something’s happening. Be on your guard._ ”

More dark figures approached the club from the north, then from another adjoining alley, then so close to Connie’s position she found herself holding her breath as they passed by. At the same time, North reported that the Insurrectionists inside the building had begun to move out.

The _second_ they stepped out of the door, the dark-clothed figures attacked.

“ _What the absolute cocking_ shit _is going on down there?!_ ” South hissed. “ _You’re telling me those aren’t more Innies?_ ”

“ _Apparently not._ ”

“ _Then who the fuck_ are _they?! Connie?_ ”

“I have no idea,” Connie said, already running through her files on the area. It was early days; their understanding of the system was still evolving. “My helmet camera is recording, I’ll— _South!_ ”

The sharp _thud_ of six and a half foot of armour-clad woman hitting the ground sent the brawling parties into the wind, scrambling up where they’d been knocked down and scattering into the darkness. They were fast, dressed to run at the drop of a hat, but South was faster—she couldn’t catch them all, but she didn’t need to.

One of the intruders had made the mistake of wearing a hood. All it took was one _yank_ to stop them in their tracks and pull them to the ground.

North sighed. “ _And there goes our cover._ ”

Connie was out in the street before he finished his sentence.

South stood over the unlucky intruder, her foot placed on their chest with just enough weight to hold them in place. The bottom half of their face was hidden behind a black bandana, their fallen hood revealing scruffy hair that was either dyed purple or so light it was reflecting the tone of the street.

“Who the fuck are you?!” South snapped, rifle pointed squarely at their head. “What the fuck was your objective here, huh?!”

“Fuck you,” they spat, making a futile attempt to lift her boot.

Rolling her eyes so hard it rolled her head, South waved her gun. “Gun. Your face. Do the fucking math.”

The person huffed. “Those Renegade Sunrise shitheads were encroaching on our turf! We don’t need some righteous fucking Innies poking around, so we came to flush them out!”

“Who’s ‘ _we’?_ ” Connie said, her brow furrowing. “Who are you affiliated with?”

“Like I’d fucking tell you—” they started, only for South’s rifle barrel to prod them in the forehead, “—the Jackals! The fucking Jackals, god fucking dammit. This is _our territory_.”

“…assfucking _shit_ ,” South’s gun fell away, “you’re a fucking gang, aren’t you? You’re just a fucking civilian fucking _gang!_ ”

“No shit! Do I _look_ like some Innie to you? Get off!”

No, they didn’t. There was nothing about them that marked them as a member of Renegade Sunrise or the growing number of other cells that fell under its banner. They were dressed like any other street thug, unarmoured, unsophisticated, and no match for special operations soldiers.

“We don’t have jurisdiction over colonial matters like regional gangs,” Connie said, noting down the name with quick flicks of her eyes, “but we better call this in. If these guys are interfering in Insurrectionist operations, that’s… going to get messy.”

South groaned, her head falling back. “I’m going to get so much _shit_. But how the fuck else were we gonna get that information that fucking quick? There’s Innie nests _everywhere_. Surely the fuckers in Beta and Gamma can bug _one_ of the others they’re watching!”

“You’re right, South,” Connie said, as she contacted Command. “This is important to know. If this is going to be a recurring issue, we need to be able to account for it.”

Unfortunately, she knew that Command wasn’t going to see it the same way.

Debriefing saw South’s rank reduced. It would be another month before she reclaimed her original position.

Civilian gangs interfering—deliberately or not—with military operations was the first of the unique issues that the Luminous-VI system’s political climate had to throw at them. Handling such gangs was the job of the local militia and police, not ONI SpecOps; any disruption caused by them could throw an entire mission off-course. Killing civilians, even criminals, was _not_ the kind of publicity the UNSC needed.

Still, all in all, it was a minor inconvenience. Most gangs were quickly scared off, or even started leaving trails for the Project to direct them towards Insurrectionists they wanted out of their ‘territory’. It could be worked around.

What was much harder to work around, however, was the network of mercenaries that they soon discovered had taken root all over the system—mercenaries who, unlike the local gangs, had no problem working alongside insurrectionists so long as they could pay.

No one at the Project noticed them at first because the mercenaries used the same thrown-together and stolen UNSC armour that the Insurrectionists did. Whilst Renegade Sunrise coordinated to some degree, the sheer number of cells in the area meant that tracking the common paint jobs and symbolism was an exercise in futility. It was all too easy for individual mercenaries to slip through the cracks.

Only when an operation to disrupt a key stop on the Insurrectionists’ supply chain discovered a deal being brokered between a representative of Renegade Sunrise and a mercenary, who they came to know as Twitch, did they realise exactly what was going on.

 _Mercenaries_ were supplying the Innies with some of the more high-ticket black-market goods they’d been found with lately—new, better performing weapons, upgrades to their armour, UNSC data that allowed them to coordinate attacks, and more.

Moreover, the mercenaries’ extensive communication network acted as a _mask_ for that of the Insurrection, a thick layer of digital chatter that—deliberately, or not—helped to conceal the channels that Connie had been assigned to trace.

“ _Ugh_ , I swear if I chase down one more lead and find it leads me to a mercenary with some corny name, I’m going to throw myself out the airlock,” Connie groaned, her complaints muffled in the hands closed over her face. Mass gave her a look that she wouldn’t feel wrong in interpreting as ‘I wish you would’—though that would be a little harsh, even for zir. “This one was called _Shadow._ Like— come on.”

Even Mass managed a snicker at that. “That _is_ corny, I will admit.”

“I thought I was _finally_ getting somewhere tracing these strange, off the wall transmissions that go out to places none of the standard chatter seems to go, but nope,” her lips popped on the ‘p’. “Shadow.”

“Is that work more or less infuriating than TURN—”

“Oh, less. Definitely less.”

They shared a rare laugh, a moment of understanding, that came by once in a blue moon.

“What do you mean by ‘off the wall’ transmissions, anyway, Connecticut?” Mass said. “We _know_ these people are in contact with numerous systems.”

Connie’s brow furrowed, slightly. “The transmissions that seem to be going out in the complete opposite direction of all known allies of Renegade Sunrise. You know the ones, right?”

Mass raised a brow in return. “How would I know? That isn’t my work, Connecticut.”

“But you _must_ have helped gather this intel,” Connie said, gesturing at one of her screens. It held numerous files that Command had passed to her since that first batch of new data before the slipspace jump out there. “It’s not from any mission I’ve run with Alpha.”

“Hm.” Zir tilted zir head. “Maybe. I don’t remember it, though. Must have handed it straight over to Command, it is primarily _your_ job, after all.”

“I guess so,” Connie said, though her frown didn’t fade. “It’s also the files that seem to contain the most information on this weird cell running on Luminescence that must be paying the mercenaries top dollar for the best stuff. They’re highly sophisticated, it’s unlike any other cell we’ve encountered. We seem to be running more jobs against them lately—” and, added at the opening of Mass’s mouth, “—disruption, not intel gathering.”

Massachusetts sighed. “Why is that weird? We _know_ such access exists here.”

“It’s weird because I was given some of this intel before we set foot here, as _top priority_ , and yet before now we’d never encountered this cell, let alone another with anywhere near this kind of pull,” Connie said. Not to mention the Director’s refusal to answer questions about the origin of the data, which now only seemed more suspicious in light of Mass’s lack of knowledge on the subject. “It’s a big shift in the standard, that’s all.”

“ _That_ I will give you. But it’s a side effect of the climate here. Don’t overthink it, Connecticut.”

Connie went to open her mouth again, but it was Mass’s turn to cut _her_ off, with a look instead of words. Sighing, knowing full well she could, yes, get annoying when she went off on one of these tangents, she bit her tongue, pulled out her beads, and got back to work.

But the gears in her head kept turning, rolling the problem around like the beads in her palm, waiting for something to click.

Two days later, she was handed new data that tied the cell to one they’d all but _eradicated_ in the previous system.

It could have been a coincidence, or simply fortunate timing, but…

Connie glanced at the cameras in the corner of the room.

She wasn’t sure she believed in coincidences.

“There’s just something _off_ about these guys,” Connie said, her back pressed to the wall as she reloaded her pistol.

Wash briefly popped around their cover and delivered two dead-on shots, red targets on Connie’s radar disappearing in time with each pop, only to pull back when a burst of return fire came dangerously close to his head. “Like what?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” Connie said. There were still two signatures on the radar, spitting bullets in their direction like it was going out of style; they seemed to have the latest weapons, more advanced than even those the mercenaries were known to supply. “Before now, we’ve been fighting bog-standard Innies with easily smuggled weapons, armour…”

“There’s such a thing as a bog-standard Innie?” Wash said. Connie could practically see the stupid little smirk and raised eyebrow under the polarised visor.

“Hey, you know Covenant, I know Insurrectionists,” she said, catching his arm with her elbow. He shrugged and peeked back around the wall. “I’ve been the one studying the files on these guys. They have better weapons, better armour… we recovered technology from one of their bases that led to them making Alaska’s recharge module! That’s some serious gear!”

“Whoa!” Drawing back, narrowly avoiding another burst of bullets, he said, “Connie’s Question Time is a _lot_ higher stakes in the field. How about we deal with these guys, _then_ you can keep talking.”

“Ugh, fine,” Connie said, with an exaggerated roll of her head. “I suppose we better not die today.”

Wash chuckled and turned the corner.

He took one of the remaining foe signatures out with a shot to the head that sent them toppling back into the other, giving Connie the opening that she needed to finish off the second with a well-placed knife. Path cleared, they moved deeper into the small facility. Wash took point, rifle raised and every shot dead on the mark, efficient and clean. Drawing attention was an inevitability, their cover long since blown, but that didn’t mean the mission was over. This was a raid, not a stakeout.

They came to a stop outside their target—a security centre, as it often was. Washington was the one to flash his status light orange at the sound of voices inside, prompting the two agents to press back into the corners either side of the door.

Inside, there was a man clad in black and red armour—ODST grade, and not just a piece or two. An entire set, looking fresh from the production line.

CT//: <do you see that? he’s in ODST gear>

Wash’s status light flashed orange again, an acknowledgement without risking a misunderstanding. He wasn’t at the right angle to see inside, she realised.

CT//: <it’s a full set, latest mark. I don’t even think it’s present in this system>

WA//: <surely there’s been other rebels in ODST gear>

CT//: <not a full set and certainly not that grade>

The man was leaning over the terminal, his arms spread with his palms braced against the edges, his head down. Frustrated, maybe? He wasn’t looking at the screen, but on zooming in Connie could make out references to shipments of equipment and what looked to be an attached codename—Rat?—but not the details.

A moment later, the man pulled himself upright with a deep sigh and swiped his way down the list on the screen until it hit the bottom. There, either satisfied or deeply the opposite, he swiped the information away and stared into a small black object just above the screens.

A camera.

Two seconds passed, just long enough for a retinal scan to process through an unpolarised visor, and the system locked down.

“Alright, let’s move out,” he said, talking to someone else in the room she couldn’t see. “Before our intruders get too close.”

Wash’s status light flashed red, but they held position—

The man left through another door. Both of them released breaths.

WA//: <that was weird>

Connie made the move into the room first, signalling Wash when she deemed it clear. However, examination of the terminal found it to be thoroughly locked down, well beyond the kind of security Connie could break in the field.

“That’s new,” Wash said, standing over her shoulder. “Isn’t it? Can you get anything?”

“Yes, Wash, this level of cybersecurity is new. The drives I have can rip the raw encrypted data from the on-site servers but… there’s no guarantee I can get into them after,” she said, already in the process of inserting one such drive. “From what I could see, it looked like details of equipment shipments from someone called Rat.”

“That sounds kinda like a merc name. Maybe they really are just… doing business with a very skilled merc with a lot of connections? To uh, go back to Connie’s Question Time,” Wash said.

“Maybe.” It was possible, but… “Something just feels wrong. I guess I’ll find out if I manage to pull anything useable.”

Wash clasped a hand over her shoulder and gave her a friendly shake. “You always do, Connie.”

Squeezing his hand, Connie found herself grateful for her helmet; it hid her frustration better than she ever could.

So, yes, the operation in the Luminous-VI system quickly became derailed by… _complicating factors_.

What was meant to be a deployment of maybe three months, based on analysis of the Project’s combat statistics and record, became four months, five months, six…

When they’d arrived at the system, a single simulation base had been built for their use. Outpost 8 – Bone Point, a simple simulation on Scintilla set up in an abandoned city square. By the time they crossed into month five, a second had to be built on Fatuus—Outpost 13 – North Valley—to enable the Project to better continue its training operations.

It was a testament to how unprepared the Project had been for the situation they had become entrenched in.

“It’s like they’re fucking reproducing,” South groaned, lying back on her bed with an ice pack pressed against ribs so colourfully bruised you could be forgiven for thinking she’d gotten tattoos to match her other side. “For every fucking place we clear out, twenty more fucking dick dens—” (“ _Dick dens?_ ”) “—pop up! Yeah, dick dens, babe, that’s what they’re called now, keep up.”

Connie giggled, tilting her head back against South’s thigh. “Should I be calling them that in my official reports?”

“Fuck yeah you should.”

“It _does_ seem like they have an endless supply of cannon fodder to throw at us, but I’ve found no evidence that they’re cloning themselves or anything,” Connie said, earning a laugh followed by a pained groan. “I’ll let you know if I find anything tomorrow.”

“ _Ugh,_ I was meant to be on that drop,” South said. “I don’t know if I should be fucking pissed or fucking grateful. Don’t know if I could take another fucking recon run. Never seem to get anything else since we started this shit. Fucking bullshit is pissing me off.”

Connie turned her head and pressed a little kiss to her thigh. “I think you can be both.”

South was hanging onto her position at fourth on the board through the power of sheer spite alone, pushing her way through ill-fitting assignments despite her frustration. It was like a test. A test that, whilst South was not the _only_ agent being subjected to it, certainly felt like it was aimed squarely at her.

“Fucking asswipe,” South grumbled. “Ugh, now I’m annoyed. Did you get those new knives you put in a requisition for?”

“Yes, but stabbing the Director is not the answer here,” Connie said. “No matter how tempting.”

“Shit mischief don’t make me fucking laugh again,” South said with a snort. “I don’t want to stab the Director—okay, that’s a fucking lie, but that’s not why I asked. Can you do that thing you do? Where you fucking ramble about your knives and make them sound like the most interesting things in the fucking world?”

“…you mean info dump my head off about them?”

“Please. It’s therapeutic.”

Lighting up with a grin, Connie wasted no time in retrieving her knives from under her bed.

Settling into their new relationship had been easy, like breathing. Nothing had really _changed_ , in the end—not in any fundamental way. Their relationship was still built upon the very same things that had brought them close in the first place—a shared sense of humour, mutual respect and genuine enjoyment of each other’s company.

There was just a lot more kissing now. And sex, also sex.

Any fears Connie had been wrestling with before they got together felt silly now, months down the line into a relationship that was as meaningful to her as it was fun.

Their sparring competition had continued, each of their number of wins now firmly in the triple digits—though Connie had a sneaking suspicion South was letting her win, sometimes, going by the goofy grin on her face when she was pinned down.

Meal slots had quickly become something of a daily double date, with Maine and Wash sat opposite them almost without fail. Wash would sit there, mooching half of Maine’s desert, whilst chattering away happily with the two of them, giving as good as he got when the inevitable teasing started.

But what was perhaps the _funniest_ side effect of the change was the emergence of a running joke that their relationship was—

“—the most expensive hook-up on this ship, honestly,” York said, hands waving wildly. “I swear I’m paying Niner double for shit since South stopped helping to bribe her.”

“York, that’s got nothing to do with us and _everything_ to do with who you are as a person,” Connie said, which only served to make York pout exaggeratedly at her.

“You only ever got me to fucking bribe her when you’ve pissed her off, dickshit. Don’t fucking pout, she’s spot-the-fuck-on.”

York only pouted harder, until Carolina pulled the hood of his sweatshirt down over his face.

Most of all, the time she got to spend with South was like a rest station on the mountain of stress that kept growing and growing the longer they were stuck in the system. 

The data pulled from the raid she’d run with Wash was designated her top priority, no matter how difficult it was to try and break the encryption that had it locked down. Biometric seals weren’t as hard to crack as some people would like to think, but it wasn’t _easy_ , certainly not after brute-forcing the encrypted data out in the first place.

Worse than the difficulty, however, was that it felt like a total waste of time.

Command had yet to offer any explanation for the sudden shift in focus onto this one specific cell who followed _none_ of the patterns Connie had observed in the collective they were supposed to be unravelling. It was, _theoretically_ , possible that they were the key to the whole operation, but if there was any evidence of that then Command was keeping it close to their chests, which hardly inspired trust. The questions she had about this cell were not the questions she was being tasked to answer.

She still did her work and she did it to the best of her ability, but it didn’t mean she was happy about it.

So it was a bright spot in her day when South messaged her; or swung by the Intelligence Centre’s windows out onto the bridge to wave hi; or, as she’d gotten into the habit of doing, sent York in with one of those dark chocolate and almond bars she loved.

“You know, not that I mind getting to come and visit everyone’s favourite hacker—” York said, as Mass rolled zir eyes behind him, “—surely it’d be more romantic if she brought this to you _herself_.”

Connie ripped open the bar and took a bite. “She’s not allowed through here, you know that.”

“Since when has that ever stopped South?”

Giggling quietly, Connie swallowed. “That’s true. But— I think she’s trying not to get _me_ in trouble, you know?”

“Fair point.”

Leaning back in the chair he’d commandeered, York spun in a circle until Mass grabbed the back of it and almost sent him flying. Connie almost choked on her snack bar laughing, at both the stunned look on York’s face and the half-smug, half-frustrated look on Mass’s.

“Sit still,” ze said.

“No promises,” York replied.

Connie tossed him her beads when his leg started bouncing.

“So… anything interesting?” he asked, rolling them back and forth between his palms. “You’ve been working at that file every time I’ve become delivery boy for the last… well, a while.”

“Oh!” Connie swallowed her mouthful and re-wrapped the bar. “You’ve caught me at _exactly_ the right time, I finally broke part of the goddamn encryption, I just sent off what I found.”

“Which is?”

“Another compound, off on Luminescence. They’ve been sending things out there,” she said, pulling up the relevant part of the file. It had taken an exorbitant amount of time and effort and it wasn’t even a fraction of the data she’d pulled, but it was something. Something actionable. “What exactly the compound is isn’t clear and I won’t be able to get that information quickly enough for the Director’s tastes, so…”

“Stakeout?” York said.

“Most likely. Gamma will do a preliminary sweep and we’ll take an extended watch, probably then followed by infiltration depending on what we find.”

“Well, much as I’d love to help out on that, I’m still marked off the active roster,” York said, sitting back. “Concussion’s still wearing off. That and, y’know, the portion of my skin they had to regrow.”

Connie flinched. “ _Ouch_ , that bad?”

“Renegade Sunrise don’t fuck around; I’ll give them that.”

“Wait,” Connie said, brow furrowed, “shouldn’t you still be in—?”

“Shhh,” York said, raising a finger to his lips, “what the medics don’t know won’t get me another lecture.”

Connie gave him the most disapproving look she could muster, but it did nothing to crack the shameless grin on York’s face. “How you’re still alive is a mystery.”

“It’s my rugged good looks and undeniable charm, obviously,” York said with a wink, leaning back in his chair. This time, Connie caught the slight twinge of pain in his face. “Anyway, I wouldn’t put money on who they’ll pair you with instead. Could be anyone. Assignments have been real… _experimental_ , lately.”

“That’s one thing to call it,” Connie said.

York raised a brow at her and she took a bite of her bar, before she could say anything she’d regret.

That, as it turns out, was an omen of things to come.

Gamma’s preliminary scan of the compound was enough to convince Command that it warranted further investigation, and, within twenty-four hours, Connie found herself jumping from the back of a stealth-rigged dropship with Carolina.

“Our surveillance position is two klicks to the east; estimated arrival time ten minutes. Sync?”

“Sync.”

The team lead wasn’t _exactly_ the partner that Connie had expected to be assigned. Her mistake was assuming that the Project would be consistent, a quality it had been lacking in recent weeks. Her partnered missions were typically run with Wash or South, when it didn’t require the aid of another infiltration specialist like York. She had _assumed_ that, with York off the roster, the most logical fallback would have been those she was used to working with one-on-one. Washington held experience in infiltration from his time in Beta and South, well, they’d been pushing her into stealth since before they even came to this system.

Obviously, her assumption was wrong.

Not that Carolina was a _poor_ choice, just… an unexpected one. One that came with additional considerations.

She’d have to watch herself. Word her questions and observations carefully.

There was no set timescale for this mission. They were to hold position and conduct surveillance until either they were discovered (unlikely); until they found information which indicated this target was not as important as initially anticipated (less unlikely); or until they discovered something they could act on (most likely).

Stakeouts like these could last anywhere from twenty-four hours to over a week.

Those first couple of days passed by in relative silence, outside of necessary communication—observations, shift swaps, and so on. Carolina was a dedicated soldier, not easily distracted nor motivated towards idle chatter in the field; it was one of the things that made her an accomplished leader. She knew how to keep people on track because she rarely strayed off it herself, her dry sense of humour reserved for the moments in-between.

Connie had expected no different. Though still somewhat surprised by the assignment, she did find that Carolina’s quieter, centring presence made it much easier to focus on the task at hand than, say, York, who required a much different environment to maintain concentration. Within those first couple of days, Connie and Carolina made several important observations about the cell operating out of the compound.

First: they had Albatross drops-ships coming and going at all hours of the day. Second: they were loading these ships with what looked to be crates upon crates of supplies. Third: they were _highly_ organised, running this mass movement of supplies and materials like a well-oiled machine.

What was unclear was where the supplies were going. Or _how_ , exactly, this supposedly once near-eradicated Insurrectionist cell from a whole system away was _this_ well supplied.

Connie pointed out the discrepancies wherever she felt it was safe to do so, navigating the delicate atmosphere with social scripts practiced over years of circumventing authority wherever possible. Carolina was more reasonable than the Director, there was no question about that, but… that didn’t mean she didn’t have to be careful.

Evenings were typically quieter than the days. They took turns sleeping, but meal breaks were much more relaxed affairs. Whilst making sure to keep an eye on what was happening down at the base, they allowed themselves the luxury of mealtime companionship when even the Innies deemed it too dark to continue work.

Still, it came as a surprise when, as they ate on the third night, Carolina said, “It would usually be around about now that York would be losing his mind on a mission like this.”

“Only now?” Connie asked, amused.

“He can usually tough it out for a while, but he has a breaking point,” Carolina said with a nod. “I’m sure he’d have done as good a job as he always does, he’s second place on the board for a reason, but we all have things we’re good at and stakeouts are not one of York’s.”

“I suppose he might be grateful not to be on this assignment after all,” Connie said, taking another bite of her chicken with egg noodles. Carolina made a quiet noise of agreement and, for a moment, they sat in silence again, until… Connie bit the bullet. “You know, I was a little surprised when I found out South hadn’t been assigned to this mission. She’s been assigned to a lot of reconnaissance lately.”

Carolina swallowed. “Strictly speaking, she’s been assigned to her _brother_ a lot lately, not reconnaissance.”

Connie’s eyes widened, something she quickly disguised by coughing as if she’d simply swallowed something wrong.

Oh. _Oh._ Oh of _course_ that was what— oh that was so much _worse._

“They’re a very effective field team,” Carolina continued, either having not noticed or having dismissed it, Connie wasn’t quite sure which. “You’ve seen them, they’re arguably the best combat partnership in the program.”

Connie couldn’t deny that. The way the twins fought together, their _synchronicity,_ was unparalleled; she’d seen South leap off North’s back to jump onto a low-flying Falcon’s weapons platform, _wrench_ the gun around and shoot out the cockpit, before leaping back down and using him as a step on the way. He’d matched her every movement without a word said between them.

If anything could make Connie believe in the idea of twin telepathy, it was the way the Dakotas fought.

But that didn’t make the fact South was being assigned to missions based on her brother’s speciality any better and Connie felt the muscles in her jaw tense before she even realised her teeth had gritted.

She took a deep breath.

“…that is true,” she said, voice even. Carolina didn’t make those kinds of assignments, that was the Director and Counselor’s doing. Don’t shoot the messenger, and don’t get yourself shot for the trouble. “I wouldn’t want to go against those two in a doubles match.”

“I went against them solo, once,” Carolina said, a smile on her face. “I won. Barely, but I did.”

“I’d have loved to see _that_ spectacle,” Connie said, and she meant it. “When did that happen?”

“An early slipspace jump, before your time. We had a little free time in the schedule so…” Carolina shrugged, the smile taking on an element of smugness. “It was fun. Though I’m not sure they would remember it quite so fondly.”

Maybe not, but somehow the story felt like a memory of a simpler time. Before the board, before a poor training session could have tangible, immediate consequences. Before your rank was a visible brand on your every move.

Connie stuffed her mouth with a forkful of noodles.

Finishing her meal, Carolina stood up, her armour’s distinctive teal transitioning into the earthy tones of standard UNSC camouflage. “Finish up and get some rest. Set your alarm for 0000 hours.”

“Will do, boss.”

Carolina clapped her on the shoulder and slipped into the darkness, taking up watch for the night.

Her internal alarm woke her up dead on time and she switched out with Carolina, her armour’s base colour bleeding through as her unit deactivated. Patches of the surface retained some green-brown discolouration, a side effect of the unit running for so long on only the suit’s power; it didn’t drain the user in the same way many of the other units did, but it still had its limits.

“Wake me if anything important happens,” Carolina said, before going to take her mandated hours of sleep.

Connie settled into her surveillance position, her HUD’s night-vision activating automatically.

So far, the early hours had been uneventful. The odd ship flew in and out, but rarely; the hustle and bustle of the rapid movement of supplies was reduced to all but a standstill, the only frequent activity the slow rotation of the guard duty.

Connie kept her eye out but, all in all, there was little for her to observe for the first few hours of her watch. The guard rotation didn’t change, it stayed consistent with every other night so far. The ships that came in were either quickly abandoned for the night, or just as quickly stocked up and sent back out with another round of crates. So rather than taking new notes, she instead found herself dwelling on the things she already knew.

Admittedly, their behaviour did, in some ways, line up with what they had come to expect from this collective. They were stockpiling resources, clearly stolen from the UNSC by someone—perhaps this ‘Rat’ person—and, in all their encounters here in Luminous-VI, they had fought back against the Project with vigour.

What was lacking was self-motivated movements against UNSC targets—striking first, rather than retaliating. If this really was a fresh growth from the cell from back in the Oriens system, they’d succeeded only in small-scale strikes in the past, but that had been a result of their size. Surely, if they’d grown to such numbers, they’d have the power to act now? Especially with the support of the collective, who were still the source of attacks against multiple remaining UNSC sites in Luminous-VI and beyond.

Perhaps they were the supply corps, of sorts? With all those ships coming and going…

Yet that didn’t explain the armour some of them wore. ODST grade.

Or the fact that none of the other cells were _this_ sophisticated.

No, it still made no sense. No sense at all.

It was almost sunrise, by the time things began to move again. Under the faint light of twilight, a single Falcon flew in and two people jumped out—ODST armour, like the man from before, but accompanied by more standard looking soldiers.

One had no sleeves to their under-armour. The other, a lipstick-mark style decal on their chestplate.

She’d heard a little about these two, from Beta squad. Virginia said they were an experienced combat team, going by the way they fought. Monty had come away with a nasty stab wound to the gut—whatever knives they used were unusually shaped.

Glancing at the clock, Connie bit her lip and sent an alert to Carolina’s channel.

Two minutes later, she appeared beside her, suit once again blending into their forested surroundings.

“Two more of those wearing the ODST armour arrived, about five minutes ago,” Connie said, as Carolina settled into position. “They’re standing around, looks like they’re waiting for something. Or someone.”

Carolina nodded. “I see them. Any thoughts on for who or what?”

“Maybe the other members who wear that gear? They must be higher ranking, somehow; only a select number of them have been seen wearing that armour.”

“That would make sense. It’s much more difficult to acquire a set like that than standard marine issue.”

“That’s— that’s another thing, that doesn’t quite make sense about what we’re seeing here,” Connie said, her fingertips dragging against the rough kevlar across her palm. “The fact they even have what is at least three sets of full, latest mark ODST armour is _far_ beyond the skillset of this cell when we last encountered them. In fact, most of what we’re seeing here is beyond them. The numbers, the equipment, the organisation…”

Carolina cocked her head. “So what you’re telling me is they’ve become significantly more sophisticated, despite our disruption?”

“If this really is the same cell then yes,” Connie nodded, “absolutely. They’ve even been the source of one of the new units, it’s… it’s more than significant.”

“I see.” To Carolina, the statement seemed to prove something entirely different than it did for Connie—as if it was an answer, rather than the start of tens or hundreds more questions. “There’s another Falcon approaching.”

It landed beside the first and another two figures clad in red-and-black ODST armour jumped out. One couldn’t have been even five feet tall, with an unusually thick braid that reached their mid-thighs sticking out of the back of their helmet; the other was the man from the previous facility, his chestplate emblazoned with a pill symbol.

“That’s him, the one who locked down the systems at the other location,” Connie said.

“The leader, you mean?” Carolina said, already pushing up to her knees.

“Uhh,” Connie blinked, rolling half onto her side to look at her. “Of the cell? I guess so, going by his clearance.”

Before she’d even finished her sentence, Carolina was on the radio. “This is Agent Carolina reporting from the field. Go for secure.” Pause. “We have sight of the leader. Yes, Connecticut confirms it’s him. What are our orders, sir?” Pause. “Understood. Carolina out.”

“What was—?”

“We’re moving from surveillance to infiltration,” Carolina said, pushing herself to her feet and offering Connie a hand. She took it and Carolina pulled her from the ground. “Our objective is to capture or eliminate the leader; should that not be possible, we are to gather what intelligence we can and introduce spyware or shut down their systems.”

“With respect, Carolina, the former seems unlikely with just the two of us,” Connie said. Already, she was re-orienting her HUD layout for infiltration, quick flicks of her eyes pulling up the programs she’d need at quick access. “I think we’d be better off focusing on the intelligence.”

Carolina nodded. “Alright, but if we get the opportunity to take him out, then we take it, understood Connie?”

Taking a deep breath, Connie said, “Understood, boss,” and let her take the lead.

Carolina took point at every turn, scouting ahead with her adaptive camouflage set to automatically adapt to her surroundings—it wasn’t perfect, and she could only run it for so long, but it was better than nothing and quicker than manual. No one saw her as she cleared the way, beckoning Connie ahead only when their path was free.

With boots on the ground, the scale of the facility became clearer than ever. They passed by six separate landing bays on their way inside, most containing grounded Albatrosses that would soon be ferrying new rounds of supplies off somewhere unknown. There were multiple others on the other side of the facility. This level of air support was…

Connie shook her head and forced herself to stay on task. Maybe there would be satisfactory answers in the files here, if they could get to them before they were locked down this time.

(She really, _really_ hoped there would be, or…)

The building was slowly coming alive around them, people waking up and returning to their duties; they had just enough of a window to get past the guards outside, but inside they were all but on their own. Connie expected to find herself giving directions that could best be described as guestimates, based on the layout of their previous facilities, only to instead find the halls littered with signing. They had directions to the security centre in under a minute.

There was nothing ramshackle about this place. Where in the galaxy were these people getting their—

Carolina pulled back from around the next corner, pressing against the wall.

CL//: <Security center is across the hall. We get in there and you get what we need—any information on where these shipments are heading is your top priority. I’ll keep watch. Sync?>

CT//: <Sync.>

Getting past the base layer of security, rather than the lockdown initiated by the leader, was much, _much_ easier. Like everything else, their cybersecurity was a step above that of any other cell, but Connie was able to navigate past their countermeasures and get deep enough into the system to start digging through their records.

As her programs got to work, she pulled up the cameras on another screen.

Carolina stood guard at the door, coiled and ready to strike if anyone stumbled in. They’d been lucky, so far, but their luck could turn at any time.

“ETA on the download?”

“Not long. Maybe a minute more, give or take? I’ve isolated what we need, it’s working its way… through…” Connie said, trailing off as movement in one of the feeds caught her eye. There, heading their way, were the leader and the tiny, braid-wearing insurrectionist, their helmet now tucked under their arm but their face out of sight as they walked backwards, nattering away at the tired looking leader.

 _Shit._ Okay, okay, all she had to do was buy herself a _little_ more time and—

“Connie? What’s wrong?” Carolina said, her stance shifting from prepared to actively alert.

Connie glanced at the percentage.

_87%... 88%... 89%..._

“The leader’s heading this way,” she said. “Him and the little one.”

“ _What?_ ” Carolina hissed. “Connie, take the drive, whatever you have will have to be enough.”

“I only need thirty more seconds, tops.”

“ _Connecticut._ ”

“We won’t get another shot at this information, Carolina. Besides—”

_90%... 91%... 92%..._

“—there’s only one entrance and they’re about to reach us.”

Carolina’s armour shifted to match the plain steel-grey of the walls. “Hide. _Now._ ”

Reluctantly, Connie minimised the progress display and dropped down behind the security terminal, making herself as small as physically possible in armour as bulky as hers. On her HUD, the percentage countdown continued.

Less than a second later, the door opened.

“—and the whole time,” said the one with the braid, walking into the room backwards, “I'm sitting there on the counter, ice cream on my fucking face, watching Demo commit a crime against cooking— hey!”

The leader grabbed their shoulder, stopping them in place, and raised a hand.

Connie held her breath.

_94%... 95%... 96%..._

“What do you think you’re doing— _hey!_ ”

Pushing their helmet back onto their head, the leader jerked his own towards the door. “Head back to the Falcon. We’re leaving.”

“What the fuck and _why_ the fuck? We just got here! Oh, fuck you, you’re doing the Spidey senses thing aren’t you? _Ugh_ , you weirdo. Needles, if this is another false alarm, I am personally going to shove Sharkie’s flamethrower up your—”

“There’s a foreign drive in the terminal.”

“…oh, shit. Fuckdammit.”

Now that was a sentiment Connie could appreciate.

‘Needles’ sighed. “Go back to the others. I’ll be right behind you.”

_97%... 98%... 99%..._

_<_ TRANSFER COMPLETE. _>_

The door hissed.

CT//: <it’s finished downloading. if I can get that drive, it doesn’t matter if he locks the system down, but if he gets to it first…>

CL//: <I’ll distract him. Extraction is on its way. Sync?>

CT//: <Sync.>

There was the sound of metal grazing against metal, and then Carolina popped back into three-dimensions, a blur of vibrant teal striking out—

A tomahawk skidded across the ground, stopping mere feet from Connie’s hiding place.

That was as good a cue as any.

Connie jumped to her feet, but she’d barely taken a step from behind the terminal before the leader’s head whipped towards her. Ducking beneath a high kick that should have had him flat on the ground, his arm twisted behind his back and came down wielding a second tomahawk.

One sharp swipe in front of him and Carolina was forced back, folding in on herself to dodge the blade.

Connie eyed him, then the drive, and made a dash for it.

Not quick enough.

The distinct sensation of something _tearing_ hit her before the pain did.

Vision flooded by white-hot pain, Connie crumpled like a discarded marionette against the console.

Her own pained cry never quite reached her ears, the blossoming _agony_ that tore across her nerves blotting out everything else until there _was_ nothing else, nothing but pain and gasping breaths and wet heat spreading across the floor beneath her, pooling. But she felt the cry in her throat, in the raw tug on every breath.

The next thing she heard was boots against metal and Carolina’s voice over the radio.

“—need _immediate_ evac, I’m applying biofoam, but she needs help _now_ ,” she said, her words echoed by the fresh burn of the foam filling her wound. Connie gasped, grasping blindly at her arm. “It’s alright Connie. Stay awake,” Carolina said in a way that sounded like an order, but just a little more desperate.

Connie swallowed the bile in her throat.

A blood smear down the front of the terminal. A red-stained tomahawk embedded in the metal.

But no leader. The room was empty.

“—no, sir,” said an echo of Carolina, a split second ahead of the radio in her ear. Connie was across Carolina’s shoulders. When did that happen? “The leader of the Insurrection has escaped. He ran after he struck her.”

Leader of the—

_What?_

“En route to rendezvous. Carolina out,” the strange echo continued. “Hang in there, Connie. South would kill me if you died here.”

That was when Connie blacked out.

Waking up in med bay hours later with her stomach wrapped in bandages, Connie didn’t immediately remember the things she’d heard when she was delirious with pain and half-way to unconsciousness.

South had elbowed her way into the room within minutes of her stirring and she was distraction enough, with her barely concealed worry and welcome attention, let alone the steady stream of medics who came to check on her and inform her of her status.

The tomahawk had torn through her suit, but without it the injury would have been much worse, they told her. Not that she needed the doctors to remind her what damage a blade could do to a person. She’d made people spill their guts before. It was never something she expected to experience herself.

She was to be held in recovery for a week, minimum. Their medical technology was doing its work, knitting the damage done to her abdominal tissue over time, but that meant she was on a regimen of painkillers and monitoring.

Of course, that meant she wasn’t allowed out to work on the new data that they had successfully retrieved.

“I grabbed it as we left,” Carolina said when she came by to check on her that evening. “For some reason, he didn’t take it before he ran. He almost looked like he’d seen a ghost. It was strange.”

“That is strange…” Connie said, her brow stitched as tightly as her wound. “Though that reminds me. When I was passing out… did you say he was the leader of the Insurrection?”

Carolina raised a brow. “Yes, I did. You confirmed it before we entered.”

“I thought you meant leader of the _cell_. Is that who that guy is?” Connie said, though it felt wrong to even ask. He couldn’t be, could he? This strange, disconnected cell who never attacked first, couldn’t be the centre of the entire operation, _surely._ Where was the evidence? Why hadn’t she seen it?

“It’s the current assumption. You said it yourself, Connie; they’re much more sophisticated than the other cells.”

“…I did say that,” Connie said, fingers curling into the sheet beneath her. “My head’s a bit scrambled, I must be forgetting some information I was passed.”

Carolina nodded and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Get some rest, Connie.”

“I’ll try my best, boss.”

Extended stays in medical were just as annoying as York’s repeated habit of leaving early suggested they were. Lucky as she’d been to suffer minimal serious injuries in the Project, Connie hadn’t built up much of a tolerance for it as a result, and the endless hours sitting in bed, with only her data-pad to occupy her until Wash or South had free time to visit, were _mind-numbingly_ dull.

She thought the boredom would be alleviated somewhat when she found out Mass was working on the data in her stead, meaning she could at least keep up with zir progress through comm. messages, but oh no, that became its own brand of torture.

Mass was, as ze often liked to remind her, _not_ a hacker. Decryption was not a part of zir skillset; ze could do it, with Connie’s programs on hand and what knowledge ze had been forced to absorb whilst working with her, but ze could not do it _well_. 

As one might imagine, watching someone with no idea what they were doing try to complete your own work was… _frustrating_ , to say the least.

“Put that fuckin’ thing down, mischief, you look like you’re gonna have a fucking aneurysm,” South said, covering the screen with her hand. All attempts to pull the pad away and see her screen were easily foiled, until Connie finally dropped it against her legs. It was the day before Connie was due to be released and Mass was once again struggling to break a layer of encryption on another batch of records. Instructing zir over text and without the data in front of her was no longer working. It was driving her _insane._

So, admittedly, South had a point.

“The fact I’m getting out tomorrow should make this more bearable, but somehow it makes it worse,” Connie sighed, flopping back against her pillows. “I don’t remember it being this _boring_ last time I was in here.”

“Last time you were in here for any length of time it was watching over my fuckin’ ass when that Renegade sniper got me through the chest,” South said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Connie’s ear. Connie leaned into her hand. “You don’t _get_ injured, you nimble little shit. Your workaholic tendencies make you fuckin’ bulletproof.”

“But not tomahawk proof.”

South snorted. “But not fuckin’ tomahawk proof, no.”

Connie pressed a kiss against South’s palm and just sat, for a moment, looking at her. South had a relaxed smile on her face, that glimmer in her eye. Her thumb brushed idly over the curve of Connie’s cheek and Connie relaxed, enjoying the moment of peace.

Until another message notification lit up her band and data-pad at the same time.

She picked the pad back up.

South groaned. “Mischief. _Babe_.”

“I’m sorry, it’s driving me mad.” Opening the message, she was greeted by yet another question on what to do now. Connie threw her hands up. “Mass isn’t equipped for this! It’s not zir specialty! I should be over there decrypting it. They should have either let me work or _waited._ ”

“Babe,” South said, cupping both sides of her face, cheeks squished, “am I gonna have to fuckin’ smuggle you down there to do it your fuckin’ self so you can sit and _relax_ for five fuckdamn minutes in a row?”

Connie’s eyes lit up.

“Would you?”

“…you know, shoulda seen that coming. I was fucking kidding, but how the fuck am I supposed to deny that face, huh? Shit. The medics are gonna hate me.”

“Hate _us,_ ” Connie corrected, through smushed lips. 

“Nah, this is your first offence. They’ve been tired of my shit since day one,” South said without elaboration, standing up. “C’mere, before they catch on.”

It was a long way from medical to the Intelligence Centre—a whole zone away and two levels up—but no one dared to question why South was walking through the halls with Connie clinging to her back like a koala. The closest thing to a disruption was York, who caught sight of them and gave Connie a knowing grin as he passed by.

“Shouldn’t you be in medical?” he teased.

Connie flipped him the bird, her smile badly hidden against South’s shoulder.

South crossed the boundary of the Intelligence Centre for the first time to deposit Connie in her seat next to Mass, who jumped and looked at the two of them like they’d each grown a second head.

“ _What_ are you _doing_ here?” ze said, as Connie entered her credentials. “You’re _supposed_ to be in medical, _recovering_. I’m _perfectly_ capable of doing this work on my—”

“You cannot do this work on your own.”

“—I,” Mass stuttered, then sighed. “No, you’re right, I cannot do this work on my own. I’m _this_ close to tearing my hair out.”

“Throw the records over to me and take a break, Mass. It’s fine. We all have our specialties.”

“We certainly do,” Mass said, transferring the active records to Connie’s terminal. “I may have gained a… new respect, for how difficult this is. But!” ze said, holding a finger up. “That doesn’t mean I like it any more.”

Connie bit back a laugh. “Understood, Mass. Now really, take a break.”

South propped herself up against the empty terminal that technically belonged to York and watched as Connie sank her teeth into the work she’d been waiting to get at all week. It wasn’t quick work in the sense that it was a snap of her fingers and it was done—enough time passed that South reluctantly left when her band started beeping—but it should never have taken as long as it had.

Within an hour, she’d made progress.

Within two, she’d cracked it.

“Okay, decryption in progress,” she said, exhaling. “What asset are we looking for, exactly?”

“They didn’t give me a name or dimensions or anything. Just that we needed to look for something that was transported separately, with a guard, to somewhere completely different to the majority,” Mass said. “Oh, and to look at dates a couple of months back. Hence, we’re looking at that set of records.”

“Could they _be_ more vague?” Connie said, nose scrunched in thought. The file finished processing and she began to scan through, setting up a quick filter to eliminate the obvious chunks of transports that were grouped together. “There could be any number of things that fit that—”

The filter ran its course.

Only one record remained.

Mass quirked a brow. “Connecticut? Did you find it?”

Connie swallowed. “…I— I think so. Yeah.”

“Then what’s wrong now?”

<Transported to: Bjørndal Cryogenics Facility, Arctic Ocean, Earth.>

Earth. Humanity’s homeworld.

What the _hell_ was this Insurrectionist cell operating in the backwaters of human occupied space doing sending a package to _Earth?_

A deep unease twisted in Connie’s gut.


	8. Personnel Decisions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b47604d436e8928e22ed7b61636e7d5b/f94da952f0278503-ee/s640x960/b30e946856b8032af8a3c8f896654d5592ea0108.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

They were in slipspace by the end of the week.

Of course they were.

Not that Connie hadn’t hoped for the opposite. Aiming a military ship towards the Earth was playing a dangerous game. The front lines of the war were ever shifting; the Covenant wasn’t an enemy that was easy to predict. All military vessels were under strict orders not to return to Earth when being followed and it was advisable not to travel to Earth at _all_ unless it was _essential_.

This shouldn’t have qualified. Handling this should have been the job of the Sol System’s military.

Not them.

Yet there they were, the _Mother of Invention_ eerily silent as it carved through the inky blackness of slipstream space.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing about this made sense. There were _rules_.

They had to have gotten clearance, then. At least, Connie had to _believe_ that they had. It hadn’t appeared in any of the communications she’d intercepted in the days between the revelation and the jump, but she knew they had channels with heavier encryption that she’d yet to risk cracking.

She didn’t have all the facts, that much she knew; ignorance that was one part her caution, one part the lack of the transparency that the Counselor had promised her all those months ago.

Maybe this really _was_ a target that required their skills. Maybe this really was something that, if they didn’t act _now_ , could weaken Earth’s defences against the Covenant.

Maybe.

She _had_ to believe that it was.

Even if the briefing had filled the bridge with tension so thick a knife would get stuck in it, embedded at the tip.

“Wh- _oly_ shit—!” Wash exclaimed, catching himself a second before his faceplate and the grated floor became acquainted.

The hologram he’d lunged at glitched and fell apart in his wake. The real Connie skidded to a stop a metre away, panting with exertion. In the back of her skull, the dull tingle of the unit tapping into her neural implant spiked and then faded, taking the second projection with it.

“Gotcha,” she teased, straightening up.

“I swear, that thing looked alive,” Wash said, gesturing vaguely at the space the hologram had occupied.

“That’s kind of the point.”

“Oh— shut up.”

Shaking her head at him, a smile spread beneath her helmet, Connie spoke to the air. “How are my numbers looking, F.I.L.S.S.?”

< _There was a three-point-six percent improvement in your reaction times that round, Agent Connecticut. Very impressive._ >

“Thanks, F.I.L.S.S.,” Connie said, bouncing on the tips of her toes. The energy running through her was half the pipeline to command and half pure excitement. Unit training had always been exciting: the buzz never quite went away no matter how often they practiced and no matter how many doubts plagued her subconscious. “Alright, who wants to try next?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Carolina said, stepping forward from the edge of the centre circle, “but after that, Connie, you’re due a break. No arguments. You’re on strict orders from the medics for the rest of this week.”

“I know, I know,” Connie sighed. “But, for the record? I’m totally fine, thanks to the magic of modern medicine. So, you better not hold back if you hit me.”

Carolina slipped into stance as her helmet tilted an inch to the side. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Wash fell back behind the line dividing the fighters from the spectators, just in time to dodge the high kick that Carolina aimed at Connie’s head.

The focus of this exercise was Connie’s defence, not offence. Rather than taking the opportunities she saw to strike, she retaliated only with blocks and dodges, even the swipes of her training blade more a method of distancing than direct assault. Carolina never once faltered, following every blocked strike with two more in quick succession.

All the time Connie was waiting. Biding her time. Looking for that moment where she was backed into a corner so she could—

Her heel hit the blue line, the last marker between her and being thrown out of the fight.

Brown armour lunged at Carolina in a blur of movement, only to stutter mid-air as Carolina knocked the real Connie down with a well-placed kick in the head.

The hologram fell away into pixels, her helmet scuttering across the ground.

“ _Ouch_ ,” Connie groaned, rubbing the back of her skull. All of her weight supported on one arm, she looked up at Carolina. “Maybe getting in such close proximity to those legs of yours was a bad idea.”

“I see what you were going for,” Carolina said, picking up the detached helmet. “I didn’t see you duck down, exactly; I saw the hologram sort of… skip a step. Like a missing frame in a video.” Offering Connie a hand, she continued, “Your reaction time is certainly improving, but the delay is there if you’re looking for it.”

“Yeah, that’s the flaw in this training scenario,” Connie said, pulling herself to her feet. “You all know what’s about to hit you.”

“Didn’t stop Wash missing the real you by a fucking lightyear!” South jeered from the side-lines.

“It’s harder than it looks!” protested Wash.

“That’s what she said,” said York.

“Alright, that’s enough, you three,” Carolina said, cutting them off before it could derail the session further. “Go take thirty, Connie. Sit at the side if you like, but stay well back.”

“Yes, boss,” Connie said, with a hint of friendly attitude and improper salute.

Carolina pushed her helmet into her hands and shook her head, a quiet chuckle under her breath. “Alright, South, North, you’re up.”

Connie stretched up as far as she could and just about managed to plant a kiss on the underside of South’s helmet’s jaw as they passed by each other.

A quick order to F.I.L.S.S through her HUD and one of the grated panels raised, producing a low column for her to perch on. She sat there, swinging her legs, as the Dakotas took over the floor. South was bouncing on her heels, shaking out her arms, as the ship’s pipeline connected to her suit and disconnected from Connie’s.

Connie sagged, slightly, the lingering effects of the unit setting in. Months of practice had dulled the impact of running the units on the body, but the ways they were using them had intensified to match. Though she was never quite as tired as she’d been the first time, these sessions were some of the most exhausting on their schedules.

During this trip, they also made up the _majority_ of their schedules. They would continue to do so for the rest of the two-week-long journey.

Leaning back on her hands, she watched the way South commanded her unit. In her hands, the dome was less a shield and more of a weapon, a _trap_. She baited Wash into coming at her first and activated the unit at the last second, the hard-light slamming into him like a battering ram, leaving him sprawled out on the floor. She let Maine get close, then dropped the shield over their head and forced them into such tight quarters they couldn’t even stand straight.

Once you were inside the dome, you were trapped in there with her. Not the other way around.

The twins had been experimenting with shaping the shield, reducing not just the size of the dome itself but the number of panels and their placement. South’s latest trick was curving concentrated panels of hard-light around her gauntlets, like weaponised bracers; it was energy and concentration intensive, unsustainable in its current form, but the idea was there.

As always, South was just as creative as she was dangerous.

Whilst North was certainly _competent_ with his own dome, it didn’t seem like the tool of a sharpshooter. Not after you’d seen South work.

Though, Connie had to admit, she was a little biased. Especially after what Carolina had said on the last mission.

Assigning South based on her brother, when she could do so much _more…_

“I swear to god,” Wash said, pulling himself up onto the pillar and her from her thoughts all at once, “you guys all got the cool units. South’s out here using a shield as a battering ram whilst I have a glorified bug zapper.”

“Tell that to all the cars you’ve stopped running you over,” Connie said, bumping him with her shoulder.

Wash snickered. “Okay, good point. Though the dome would be a much cooler way of stopping those too.”

< _Round Complete. Agent South Dakota demonstrated a 2.4% improvement in deployment times that round. Agent North Dakota demonstrated a 1.1% improvement in deployment times that round._ >

South’s pride spread across her whole body, her heart a vibrant stain on her sleeve. Throwing her arm around her brother’s neck she gave him the most useless noogie in the history of the human race, laughing all the while.

Connie smiled, despite it all.

Maybe it was for the best that South didn’t know why she was being given all those recon assignments.

Day after day of unit training took its toll on all of them. Finding teammates asleep in increasingly improbable places became a routine occurrence over the course of the first week of the jump. Wash held the record for the strangest place: inside a locker—North’s locker, to be precise. No one was quite sure how he got there.

Slipspace already had a strange effect on your sense of time, but it was certainly exacerbated by the strange sleep patterns everyone had fallen into.

What time wasn’t eaten up by training or naps was usually dedicated to handling the _other_ side effects of the units.

Everyone’s units affected them in different ways. Tiredness was a constant, except for in two cases: York, who’s experimentation with his healing unit left him bouncing off the walls with excess energy, and Carolina, who’s speed unit seemed to accelerate more than just her movements. Whilst the others were sleeping, Carolina and York would be working off the excess energy on the training floor.

“More like in the bedroom,” South said, waggling her eyebrows.

Carolina threw her packet of commissary snacks at her head, but South just caught it in one hand and started eating from it with the other.

Wash started giving everyone static shocks, a miniature superpower that he happily used for evil. One night, he chased Connie around the rec room couch for ten minutes, a stalemate only broken by Connie falling head over heel as she jumped over the back of said couch in an attempt to escape.

Connie herself sometimes found that she was _thinking_ about moving, but not _actually_ moving. After telling South she was going to go and grab some oil for her hands, she imagined the entire process of getting up from the bed, grabbing the bottle and coming back, only for South to turn her head sideways on the pillow to look up at her. She was still straddling South’s bare back.

“You actually gonna get up, mischief?” she’d teased. “Or you planning on fuckin’ summoning the massage oil with your mind?”

Connie blinked. “…I swear, I was moving.”

“Nah, that was your imaginary hologram.”

“Well, shit. _Now_ I’m actually going.”

Making a conscious effort, she did. Returning with the oil, she got to massaging South’s tense muscles—a side effect of her own unit, which put as much strain on her body as it put on her mind. Connie wasn’t a masseuse by any means, but South liked to claim her hands were magic anyway and she was always putty by the time Connie finished.

She assumed North had the same issue, but she wasn’t exactly inclined to ask.

The more training they did, the more intense the side effects were. For most of them, that meant very little; they just needed longer breaks between uses, longer naps, and so on.

For Carolina, it meant eating the entire ship and then crashing out so hard a naval battle wouldn’t wake her.

Apparently, her metabolism was one of the things affected by her speed unit. It made sense. Her body required additional fuel to keep up with the physical toll of moving at inhuman speeds. Starting only a few days into the jump, the amount of food she could put away in one sitting had begun to rival Maine’s—a seven-foot-five Spartan super-soldier who could probably take out a Covenant tank in a punch.

By the second week, she was stealing from their plate.

Which meant it came as little surprise when a couple of days later, Maine was seen carrying a passed-out Carolina back to her room. Apparently, she’d crashed, _hard_ , after missing out on her unit session to facilitate extra practice for Connie.

She was still unconscious at the start of the next morning’s training session.

“So,” York said, clapping his hands together, “our illustrious leader is passed out in her room like a college freshman who says they’ve _totally_ gotten drunk before, then downs a line of tequila shots to look like a big man and is found all but dead the next morning, regretting the fact they were born.”

“Speaking from experience there, chap?” Wyoming said, standing at the back of the group beside Florida.

Connie glanced back over her shoulder. When did they get on the floor? They hadn’t been in training with the rest of the squad the rest of the week. Which was… odd, now that she thought about it. Every member of Alpha and most of Beta had units. Wyoming sat at number three on the board, he _must_ have one.

So why wasn’t he there? And why hadn’t she realised that before?

York just flipped him the bird. “ _Anyway_. Since she’s not here to, justifiably, tell me off… unit training is getting boring, so we’re not going to do that. Well, okay, we _are_ , because that’s what we’ve been told to do, but later. First, we’re going to have a little fun.”

“Oh, god,” Wash said, with equally justifiable fear.

“Calm your sparky little ass, Wash, I promise this is actually fun and not just an elaborate way to torment you, even though that would be fun for _me_.”

“That fills me with the opposite of confidence.”

York’s shit-eating grin radiated from behind his visor. “We’re going to do a little ‘stealth training’,” he said, miming the quotation marks. “AKA—we’re playing hide and seek.”

“Hide and seek,” South said, crossing her arms under her chest. “We’re fucking trained killers, and you want us to play hide and fucking seek?”

“Are stealth missions not just a game of hide and seek where one party doesn’t know they’re playing?” York offered.

South stared at him, then sighed. “…what are the fucking rules, dickshit?”

“Rules!” He clapped his hands again. “When you get found, you come back to the training floor and announce your capture over radios. No using IFF tags, that’s called cheating. No entering restricted areas,” he looked knowingly at Connie, and she playfully put her hands on her hips, “no matter how tempting it is. Oh and, not that I should have to say this: no weapons.”

“Well _that’s_ a shame,” North said, completely deadpan. South snickered.

“Ah, and that’s another thing!” York pointed at North. “You’re the seeker. Half of your job is hiding in stupid places; you have an unfair advantage as a hider. No arguments. The rest of us have twenty minutes to hide, starting… now!”

North shook his head and stood in the centre of the training floor as the rest of the room emptied. York was off like a bullet, no doubt falling away to some hidey-hole he’d discovered in advance.

Maine was rumbling, gesturing from their head to toe as Wash laughed, and Connie caught the tail end of their conversation as she passed by, “—you’re just going to have to try your best, big guy.”

“Good luck, mischief,” South said, hip-checking her on her way out of the door. Then, over her radio, “Bet you a hundred credits Connie wins this.”

Connie couldn’t hear the response, but she was sure that York had taken her up on it, anyway.

Everyone scattered. Twenty minutes wasn’t as long as it seemed on a ship as large as this, but Connie knew exactly where she was going to hide.

The night before, she’d gone down to the Observation Deck again. Maine and Wash had invited her, as they often did, and they’d sat there for a long time looking at projections of different stars, cast over the eerie black of slipspace itself. When indicating a specific star from a distance failed, she’d walked over to the edge of the floating platform to point it out up close.

Leaning over the guardrail, she’d caught a glimpse of a lip under the deck. Just the right size for a smaller than average person to tuck themselves into, out of sight.

Though looking again, stood at the edge of the deck with five minutes left on the timer, it no longer seemed like the _best_ idea. There was room, but the space beneath the floating platform was dark, the glass several metres beneath it painted pitch black by slipstream space.

Her stomach tightened into knots.

Maybe there was somewhere else in here to hide?

The observation deck was a largely empty space. A couple of benches were built into the floor at the sides of the platform, but they were rarely used; the steps were a much better vantage point and more comfortable, too. There was no other furniture. All controls were built into the fabric of the room itself, activated by voice and movement, not buttons. A ceiling-mounted projector and two cameras—with much too little coverage for a room this large—were the extent of the visible technology.

There _was_ a vent, over in the far left-side wall, but examining it up close she found it was just too narrow for an armoured figure to fit inside.

With two minutes on the clock, her only option was the lip.

“Well, here goes nothing,” she sighed to herself, pulling herself over the guardrail.

It wasn’t exactly _easy_ , but she managed to clamber down and pull herself into the hidden lip with thirty seconds to spare. It was a tighter squeeze in her armour than she’d expected, but she wasn’t sure she could have held position without it. Her fingers quickly started aching from holding on until she thought to activate her grav boots, securing her in place.

Then began the waiting.

Maine was found within a couple of minutes, but after that it was quiet for a long time.

Connie shuffled, metal scraping against metal.

Where _had_ Wyoming and Florida been for the rest of this jump? There was only one other training space on the ship cleared for equipment usage and the floor and chamber weren’t meant to operate powerlines concurrently.

Their absence on the training floor felt so obvious now, but the truth was that she paid the pair—who sat outside the social core of Alpha Squad—only as much interest as was required in the line of duty. She’d checked their files, like she had anyone’s, but Wyoming had a perfectly standard military history and Florida’s was under a stronger encryption. She never really worked with him and, quite honestly, he kind of gave her the creeps, so she’d simply let it be.

But now…

Adjusting her position slightly, she craned her neck to look at the leaderboard suspended far overhead. Wyoming was still in third place, where he’d been ever since the boards were debuted. Florida was sat squarely at number nine—

Wait.

1\. Agent Carolina  
2\. Agent York  
3\. Agent Wyoming  
4\. Agent South Dakota  
5\. Agent North Dakota  
6\. Agent Washington  
7\. Agent Connecticut  
8\. Agent Maine  
9\. Agent Florida

Why did the board end at nine?

Connie scanned the screen again, but her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

None of the boards ended at nine. Some of them ended at eight, or even six, but none of them had ever ended at _nine_. Alpha squad was made up of _ten_ people.

Only… there were nine of them awake, right now.

Agent Georgia had been demoted again about a week before the jump. Stuck in medical, she’d only heard it third hand and she didn’t remember any mention of who’d replaced them. Did this mean that no one had? Was Alpha’s roster being reduced?

What in the galaxy was going _on_ at this project lately?

Her radio buzzed to life. “ _Fucker cheated and found me,_ ” came South’s voice.

“ _It’s not cheating to know my sister well, South. You’re the one who chose one of the orbital drop pods, of all places._ ”

There was a beat of silence. “ _Fuck you._ ”

Trying to put her spiralling thoughts aside—something she’d had to do much too often in recent months—Connie told herself to just have fun with the game. She didn’t have all the facts, she likely never would. She had to remember that, or she risked pushing her luck too far.

Taking a deep breath, she opened a chat message to Wash and spent the next half an hour joking back and forth as everyone else was picked off, one by one. Wash left her his skateboard and cat pictures in his hastily constructed will when North entered the room he was in and pulled him out of hiding amongst the scrap armour tub in the armoury.

She was one of the last two agents still in hiding when she heard the door open.

Heavy, armoured footsteps echoed across the empty deck as North wandered around above her, and she had to bite her lip to hold back giggles. North was thorough, he walked every inch of that platform and at one point, she could have sworn he was standing directly above her head, but he never once looked over the edge.

She heard him sigh. Then he walked out, leaving her in silence.

Another twenty minutes passed before Florida’s voice reached her ears, “ _And that’s me down and out!”_ he said, almost unnaturally vibrant. “ _Congratulations, Connecticut, you’re the last one standing! Now where_ are _you hiding?”_

“That’d be telling,” she said, muting her microphone as she groaned her way through extracting herself from her perch. “What’s the fun in winning ‘stealth training’ if I have to give myself away at the end?”

“ _You’re totally somewhere that I already checked, aren’t you?_ ” North said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll never know.”

She got back to the training floor just in time to see York slap another cR transfer chip into South’s hand, and the proud grin on her girlfriend’s face when he did. That alone was worth the weird aches she was sure she’d be feeling in a few hours’ time.

When Carolina finally woke up that evening and asked what they’d been doing, they weren’t exactly _lying_ when they said they’d run a stealth simulation, but she saw right through them anyway.

She even made them promise to wait until she could join in, next time.

It was a moment of true calm before a storm.

A lot of things became more obvious in hindsight. That was one of them—the calm, the moment that a few months down the line she would come to realise was the final moment in the ‘before’.

The ‘after’ started with a ping, sharp and piercing but not unlike any other alert. South rolled her eyes and stepped back from the sparring match (their ongoing score now sat at 157:149 in her favour) and opened it, eyes flicking quickly over the text.

“ _Seriously?_ ” she said, rolling her eyes. “Guess who’s on the fucking _stealth assignment_ , _again_?”

Connie’s shoulders dropped from stance. “Oh come on, _really_?”

“Fucking really. Me and North, as always,” South said, all but spitting the words. Sighing, she started to unwrap her hands. “Least this one’s fucking important, not some extra boring bullshit.”

“How much would you hate it if I told you to be careful?” Connie said, beckoning her down to her level to give her a quick kiss goodbye.

“Mm, only a little,” South murmured, barely bothering to pull away before she spoke. “I know you mean it fuckin’ well, not all fucking patronising and shit. Fuck, I just long for the shit where I don’t have to be _this_ kinda careful.”

“I know. You’ll kick ass anyway,” Connie said, cupping her cheek. “Go on. I’ll catch you when you come back, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She pressed into her hand. “Wait up for me, mischief.”

Connie stood there, chewing her lip in silence, for a long minute after South left. Until, finally, knowing that being alone with her wandering thoughts would do her no good, she invited Wash and Maine to join her. The room was hers for over an hour yet, why not make the most of it?

“No, no, give it here. Let me demonstrate again.”

Wash handed her the training blade without protest, but not without a huff strong enough to capsize any ship caught in the crosswinds. Ignoring the attitude, Connie gripped the hilt and held the blade with the serrated edge out.

“Okay, so hold it like this and then— it’s easier to show you. Come at me again, Maine.”

Maine repeated the same simple, wide swing that they’d used throughout the exercise and Connie ducked out of the way. Exploiting the same opening she always did to slash across their stomach, she spun around their side and even got in a secondary hit to the spine, whilst she was at it.

“You have to _slash_ at them, not stab, if you’re going to use the reverse grip. It won’t seem as effective at first, but it keeps up your guard and if you manage to get the right angle…” she gestured to the chalk mark across Maine’s shirt, perfectly bisecting their abdomen, “you may be able to get them to spill their guts, in more ways than one.”

Wash’s face twisted to such a comical degree she couldn’t be sure if it was real or fake. “ _Ew_ , Connie.”

“You’re a special ops soldier, do not get squeamish on me about some intestines.”

“Weren’t you only stationed fighting some Innies? Where the hell did you learn all this stuff?”

Connie tapped her nose with the edge of the blade, leaving behind a bright orange mark. “That’d be telling. Now, come on, give it another go. You are, despite all evidence to the contrary, good with knives and Maine hasn’t exactly got the easiest abdomen to miss.”

Maine shrugged. “Is right.”

“Oh, don’t you start,” Wash said, taking back the blade. Maine ruffled his hair, and a grin spread across his face. “Okay, okay, let’s try this again.”

Connie stood back and watched the couple spar another two rounds, though she found her eyes constantly wandering towards the screen on the wall behind them. The leaderboard still only showed positions one through nine, but that wasn’t her concern, not this time. The mission clock, ticking away in the corner— _that_ was the source of her distraction.

“I’m sure she’s fine, Connie,” Wash said, when she’d zoned out for just a little too long. “South’s getting pretty good at stealth.”

“She shouldn’t have to be,” Connie said, sighing. “I mean— you know what I mean. I don’t doubt her abilities. This mission just makes me uneasy in general.”

“Right, because we shouldn’t be here, I get that,” Wash said, and for once he almost sounded as unsure about all this as she did. It was a shame that he followed it up with, “It must just be that important, Connie.”

Maine rumbled in agreement, but she’d never expected differently of them. Then again, she wasn’t quite sure why she still expected differently of Wash.

“I guess so,” she said, fingernails finding her scar. Much more biting words threatened to march across her tongue and claim the open air, when the shrill beeping of an alarm filled it instead.

<ALERT! MEDICAL STAFF TO DOCKING BAY 6. ALERT! MEDICAL STAFF TO DOCKING BAY 6 _. >_

Stark white letters on a red bar, cycling across the bottom of the screen where the mission clock once displayed. A ship-wide page, designed by Mass, to circumvent the risk of damaged or ignored communication bands during medical emergencies.

Connie couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

North was already on a gurney headed for medical when she reached the hangar.

A spray of bullet holes marred the smooth metal of his chest plate. His helmet was nowhere to be seen, leaving his paper-white face bare, his features crumpled in pain even in unconsciousness.

Connie wasn’t proud of it, but relief washed over her when she realised it wasn’t South who’d come back injured.

“—we don’t _need_ a fucking _babysitter,_ Carolina!” South snapped, her own helmet grasped firmly in her hand as she gesticulated violently. “I’m getting fucking sick and tired of your deus-ex-Carolina _bullshit!_ ”

Carolina’s visor was cast in the shadow of a glare. “Maybe you should be grateful I was there to help so quickly, South. If I _hadn’t_ been there, North would likely be _dead_.”

South laughed a bitter, disbelieving laugh. “If you think that, then you _really don't_ _understand_ the shit I would do,” she took a step into Carolina’s space, but she stood her ground, “the shit I _have_ done, to make sure we both make it out of the fire alive.”

Carolina tilted her head back to look at her, helmet cocked, but said nothing.

South’s teeth gritted and she let out a frustrated growl, stalking away.

Her eyes fell on Connie and her steps faltered.

“Mischief— fuck, uh—” The tension in her stance relaxed barely a percent, but Connie saw it. “I gotta go punch some shit. Before I punch some _one_ and— you know.”

Connie nodded slowly. “I know. Go.”

“Take uh— take this shit.” Rooting around in her ammo compartment, she pulled out the drive from the mission and pushed into Connie’s hands. Her fingers curled around hers. “Hand that in. I gotta—”

Taking a deep breath, she kissed the top of Connie’s head and then stormed off into the ship.

The drive was still ice cold in her bare hand.

“There was another Insurrectionist in ODST armour,” Carolina said, appearing at her side. “That makes five.”

“Right…” Connie said, her thumb rubbing over the end of the drive. “What happened down there?”

“The alarm was raised. The twins made it to the extraction point, but they were surrounded. So, I stepped in.” Carolina sighed, pulling off her helmet. There was blood on her lip. “I better take that drive.”

“Right, of course.” An off-duty agent handing in South’s work would do her no favours.

Carolina took it and stepped past her. “We won’t be debriefing today. South’s time is her own.”

Connie just nodded.

Carolina left and the hangar suddenly felt very empty, despite the workers milling around and Niner’s muffled cursing from the bird up ahead. Connie was about to turn and leave when she caught the sound of engines and watched as, in the far corner of the hangar, another Pelican docked.

She frowned, but, lacking her helmet, she couldn’t zoom in to get a closer look without drawing attention and so, after a moment of confusion, she could do nothing but leave before someone noticed her lingering.

The clock on her data-pad read 22:32 when South slipped back into their room and her bed, all in the same few seconds. Warm arms wrapped around Connie’s waist and soft hair tickled the back of her neck, South’s head bowed between her shoulder blades.

She didn’t say a word. Neither of them did.

Connie only laid her hands over South’s own, warm skin on warm skin, and leaned her head back against the top of hers.

She’d talk when she was ready. Connie could wait.

It was two days before North was deemed fit to stand long enough for a debriefing.

Tension had been coiled around the squad like a snake ever since the Pelican had touched down, constricting tighter with every passing hour. South spent what time she could bear to sitting by her brother in medical, giving him the usual shit for taking the hit for her, but the reverberations of what North had actually _done_ were everywhere.

Equipment usage in the field. No pipeline back to command. A one in a million manoeuvre that saved the lives of three of the top squad’s best agents.

Connie didn’t quite believe it when she heard it. Using her unit once without a pipeline had been enough to ward her off it and that hadn’t been anywhere near as arduous as what North had pulled off whilst _injured._ It was tantamount to a miracle.

And South couldn’t get away from it. Her brother wasn’t just in medical because he’d blocked bullets for her, a practically everyday affair, but because her apparent failure at the mission had forced him to use desperate measures to keep them all alive. Desperate measures that could have killed him faster than any bullet.

A mix of guilt and anger rolled off her in waves. Those two nights were the quietest nights they’d had in months, the negative emotions swirling around the room and keeping them from restful sleep.

The restlessness continued into the mornings. Connie’s time in the Intelligence Centre was wholly unproductive. Not only was she distracted, but the data South had retrieved wouldn’t be released until the debriefing finally closed the mission. There just wasn’t anything to do.

Besides TURNCOAT. That never ending problem. Its latest glitch had it copying friendly signals, instead of enemy signals. Connie still couldn’t find the cause of it.

It meant she spent more time thinking than she did working, her eyes drifting idly around the room. Every now and then they came to rest on the leaderboard, the centre’s screen currently split between two sets of ranks—5 through 9 and 19 through 23.

Connie had been sitting at seventh for a while now. It didn’t bother her, anymore—as easy as that was to say when she hadn’t moved up nor down in months. She was still safely in the top ten, with her team, and that was all that really mattered to her.

Still, that didn’t mean she didn’t see how it affected the others.

Which was why her heart lurched when she realised that the Dakota sat at number five had suddenly changed from North to South.

South’s message came a few minutes later. A room code.

She was ready to talk.

Connie found her in one of the training rooms, stripped down to her waist. Purple armour lay discarded on the floor around her, her kevlar undersuit tied haphazardly around her hips. The dark lines of the serpent that slithered around her torso lay exposed amongst the galaxies surrounding it and, not for the first time, Connie’s eyes were drawn to the patch of iridescent black shaped into a drop-pod in freefall, right over her spine.

Unwrapped fists slammed against the weight of a punching bag. Even from the door, Connie could see the split skin of her knuckles.

“Counselor, update the leaderboard!” Punch. “Counselor, _wipe my ass!_ ” Punch. “Counselor, if you would be so kind as to suck my _old man,”_ punch, “ _wrinkle-covered,_ ” punch, “ _dick!_ ”

The bag rebounded on its chain and South barely threw up her arm in time to block it from hitting her.

“If he wants stealth so _fucking_ bad he should stop sending me. Why the _fuck_ do they keep _sending_ me when they’re clearly not fucking satisfied with what I fucking do, huh?!” she said, wiping her forehead. “ _They_ fucking designated me a fucking _stealth specialist_ , the least they could _fucking do_ is have faith in my ability to fucking _pull it off.”_

Connie walked towards South slowly and with every step, the rigidity of rage fell away from her until she slumped, her head bowed. Connie raised her hands to her face and her thumbs brushed over the line of her cheekbones, feeling the way South sagged into her.

“I know, South,” she said, voice soft.

“Who does Carolina think she is, anyway?” South mumbled, the bite of anger in her tone but the will to yell faded. “Fucking thinks that just because she’s at the top of that stupid fucking leaderboard that she’s better than the rest of us. Thinks she can fucking order us about just because she’s the teacher’s fucking _pet_.”

Biting back a comment about how, in reality, Carolina was one of the highest-ranking soldiers in the Project, Connie just kissed the top of her head and let her get it out.

“That shoulda been me on the top of that fucking bird. Cockass was already hurt because he can’t just— call out a shot, he has to fucking _take_ it, every fucking time. Why won’t he just let me take my fucking shot?” she said, and suddenly she wasn’t talking about bullets anymore.

“I’m just glad you’re alright,” Connie said, coaxing her to raise her head and meeting her eye for as long as she could bear. “And I’m sorry they keep doing this to you.”

South snorted derisively. “Never gonna get back to that number four slot again. The fuck am I supposed to live up to the shit he pulled?”

“By being you,” Connie said, though she couldn’t help but think that South was right. South only rolled her eyes, but the gesture seemed half-hearted. “Do you want to go back to the room?”

“Mmhm.”

“Alright. Pull up your suit, as lovely as your tits are I don’t think the rest of the ship needs to see them,” Connie said, kissing her softly on the lips. South leaned into it, even after she pulled away.

“Everyone should get to see my tits,” she said, with as much humour as she could muster, even as she got dressed. “They’re fuckin’ fantastic.”

“They definitely are, but public nudity is generally frowned upon.”

South snorted a quiet laugh, gathering up her armour.

Back at the room, Connie cleaned and wrapped South’s bleeding knuckles with all the care she deserved, but that no one else seemed willing to give her.

Connie couldn’t sleep.

Tossing and turning had done her no good. Neither had sitting up and cleaning her knives a second time. South slept like a log beside her, her hair tied up into multiple haphazard braids where Connie had tried and failed to soothe herself to sleep. The few times South had stirred, she’d fallen quickly back unconscious with a soft hush and a promise everything was alright, that there was nothing wrong.

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It wasn’t one thing.

There were countless things that could have been keeping her awake. South’s hurt and anger, no longer permeating the room but present in the brush of the bandages still wrapped around her knuckles, even a day later. The latest data from the Bjørndal mission, which had lined up two missions in the very near future and now suggested that these Insurrectionists had ties to the UNSC, somehow. The ever-growing sense that Connie was missing something important, somewhere, in all of this…

No, there was nothing _specific_ wrong. Nothing she could wrap up into a neat little package and express, nothing that would do more good than it would do harm.

Careful not to wake the sleeping South, Connie slipped out of bed and into the dimly lit halls of the _Mother of Invention’s_ night cycle.

She wasn’t quite sure where she was going. Briefly, she considered the observation deck, but she knew it wouldn’t be as calming without the presence of Wash and Maine, who made the experience what it was. Without them, it was just a glass dome in open space—a nightmare, by her definition.

Instead, she wandered. Her feet carried her forward without conscious thought.

Before she knew it, she was passing through the central hub, the dividing space between the living zones and the training zones. There was nothing for her there—she’d read the boards that morning, a habit she’d kept up long after the news of Resol’s fall—but her eye was drawn to the board, the very first she’d seen installed all those months ago.

How things had changed, since then.

She finally stopped in the viewing bay, overlooking the brightly lit training floor. Flinching slightly, she looked down and saw Carolina, a tornado of kicks and punches clearing a round of holographic targets with practised ease.

F.I.L.S.S reset it at her order, and she started over again.

Connie stood at the window for a while, just watching her. Acrobatic and efficient, it was a mesmerising display.

After a couple of rounds, each one quicker than the last, Carolina looked up and caught sight of Connie. Giving her a quick wave of acknowledgement, she fell back into her routine.

Connie pulled out the chair beneath the table in the centre of the bay and sat down, exhaustion setting in. Pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, she watched the dancing static for… she wasn’t sure how long, until the sound of footsteps pulled her back to the land of the living.

“Cocoa?” Carolina asked, holding up a mug. She was already out of her armour.

“Thanks,” Connie said with a nod, stretching and willing herself aware.

Carolina perched herself on the edge of the table and handed her a cup of hot cocoa, the warmth spreading quickly through Connie’s nerves. Breathing in the comforting smell, she sipped it slowly.

“You’re not one of the usual night owls,” Carolina said, cradling her own drink in hand.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Connie said. “Usually I’d just… wait it out, but that’s already failed me tonight. So, I figured trying a walk wouldn’t hurt.”

“Training is my sleep aid of choice, but I know that’s not for everyone,” Carolina said. “Anything in particular keeping you up?”

Connie bit the edge of her mug without thinking, hiding her flinch in a long drink. The question was genuine, well-meaning, but she could no more easily tell Carolina the thoughts that were swirling around her head than she could tell South. Carolina was a good leader, but…

Connie had seen things she wasn’t supposed to see, in her file. Things that made it hard to know where exactly Carolina’s loyalties lay.

Perhaps that was unfair, but Connie hadn’t made it to where she was today by being loose-tongued.

So, she shook her head. “Nothing in particular. You?”

“I don’t like coming back from missions with injured,” Carolina said, with a shrug. There was something else there, hesitance in her voice, but Connie had no more right to pry than she did. “How’s South?”

“She’s… frustrated.”

“At least she’s alive to be frustrated,” Carolina said, forcing Connie to bite her tongue. “South is a good agent. She earned the number four slot before. She’ll earn it again.”

Connie masked her lack of response in her drink.

The silence that fell over them wasn’t tense, exactly, but it was… something. Something Connie couldn’t quite place her finger on, that settled in her nerves and would have had her picking at her scar had her hand not been wrapped around a cup.

Carolina wasn’t the enemy. She just wasn’t quite an ally, either.

Connie shook her head. Why was she thinking like that? Allies, enemies; us vs. them.

“It certainly explains some things,” Carolina said, after a while. Connie tilted her head. “This cell’s connection to the UNSC. Them being defectors.”

“I suppose it does,” Connie said, fingernails clinking against the ceramic.

“How any soldier could see the war we’re fighting, could see the losses we’re taking and decide to turn their back on the UNSC…” Carolina trailed off, shaking her head.

“Not all soldiers have seen the front lines,” Connie said. “I never have. You grew up on Earth, right?”

Carolina swallowed as she nodded. Her brow furrowed, slightly—Connie knew the look, the moment people went through of trying to remember when, or if, they’d mentioned something around her before. “I did.”

“The situation is… it’s different, outside of the Inner Colonies. What we saw back there in Luminous-VI, that’s closer to the norm than you’d think,” Connie said. Sighing, she continued, “I guess my point is… I knew a lot of people who found it easier to focus on the little picture, instead of the big; some of those people were military.”

Carolina’s jaw tightened as she shot Connie a piercing look. “You might want to watch your tongue, Connecticut; you’re sounding awfully sympathetic to the Innies.”

“What?” Connie’s brow furrowed. “Oh— oh god, no, Carolina, believe me, I’m not. I have no sympathy for people who think that the middle of a war against genocidal aliens is the time for some… _revolution_ ,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just telling you what I saw back home. I knew more than one person who defected to the Innies’ side. I never agreed with them.”

“Right. Sorry, Connie; gut reaction.” Carolina sighed, the tension in her jaw fading away. “Were any of these people ODSTs?”

“Well—no, but it’s more of a broad statement than a ‘this applies here’ kind of thought.”

Carolina nodded. “Alright, well… I appreciate the insight, then. You’ve done good work, Connie; without you, we wouldn’t know half as much as we do now.”

“Just doing my job,” Connie said, putting on an accepting smile.

She didn’t feel like she ‘knew’ _half_ the things she was supposed to be responsible for them knowing.

Ever since their focus had shifted from the collective to this one cell, it was like more and more work came to her that was already in progress. Conclusions were being drawn that evidence only supported after the fact, evidence she often couldn’t verify the origins of.

The drive Command had handed her from Bjorndal had _not_ been the drive South had pushed into her hands the day of the mission.

Command was filtering what she was given and with every passing day, it felt like she knew less than she did before.

Something was wrong. Connie was just struggling to place what _kind_ of wrong.

The kind she could ignore, or the kind that she couldn’t.

They sat in that not quite tense, not quite comfortable silence until Carolina finished her cup of cocoa and hopped off the table.

“I hope you manage to get some sleep, Connie,” she said, depositing her cup on the side.

“You too, Carolina.”

Then she was gone.

Connie didn’t move for a while, nursing her cup until the dregs left behind were nothing but cold, bitter sludge that would cling to her teeth. Setting it down alongside Carolina’s, she chewed her lip.

Sleep felt further away than ever, but she knew what was bothering her, now.

She needed answers. Answers Command wasn’t going to hand her on a silver platter.

Lately, most of her forays into restricted data had been small and inconsequential; programs she could run on her data-pad were capable of intercepting basic transmissions between members of Command and she could crack most personnel files in her sleep. She’d kept it that way on purpose. First, because the Project had promised her transparency that she naively trusted them to give her; second, because the risks of digging deeper didn’t outweigh the benefits.

Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but she didn’t feel quite so cautious anymore.

She collected her PC from under her bed and slipped back out of the room as if she’d never returned, sticking to the shadows and taking advantage of blind spots in the security system as she made her way through the ship.

There was only one place on the ship besides the bunks with almost no cameras.

Connie sat in the centre of the observation deck’s platform, laying out her tools in front of her. Her PC was already established as an access point for the system, all she needed to do was adjust the permissions on the spoofed profile she’d used to gain access to Command’s files in the past.

It took her longer than she’d have liked, running on no sleep and the power of frustration, but she did it. Command’s secure database was at her fingertips.

It was difficult to know where to start.

“Think, Connie, _think_ …” she muttered to herself, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. When did this start? What was the first thing that stood out to her as out of place in this assignment?

The files she was handed before their slipspace jump to Luminous-VI. Six months back.

That was as good a place as any.

Every piece of intel she’d worked with had an associated mission code. Skimming over mission reports with number-heavy file names, she looked for any infiltration or reconnaissance mission that she couldn’t personally account for. Any number she didn’t recognise, she pulled up the file and scanned the report, inevitably closing it again when it didn’t tie back to the unexplainable data.

File after file was opened and dismissed, missions that brought back either nothing or information that lined up perfectly with her expectations before Luminous-VI. Before she knew it, she’d gone back over a month before the jump and had nothing to show for it but tired eyes and a growing sense of foolishness.

Either there was no mission, or the report was buried somewhere deeper than she currently had means to access.

Yet still, she kept searching.

Until something new caught her eye.

 _<_ Case File 01.421//Level 0; Reconnaissance. Agents Ohio, Idaho and Iowa. _>_

It was innocuous enough. A standard looking report, at a glance. Except for one thing.

The triplets had never been on a mission.

Heart leaping into her throat, Connie opened the file.

Dated a little over a month before they left the Oriens system, the file contained only three things. One, a vague mission briefing, the only instructions being to ‘investigate suspicious activity at a strategic outpost’. Two, the Triplets’ training and psychological profiles. Three—

<Agent Ohio, Agent Idaho and Agent Iowa were deposited on the glassed planet designated Charybdis-IX. No ship is authorised to return to Charybdis-IX. Agents Ohio, Idaho and Iowa will not be recovered. This is a Level 0 Directive.>

Connie forgot how to breathe.

Recovered? What did it mean ‘recovered’?

And when was this mission? Ohio would have told her if the Project had finally given them an assignment after over a _year_ of being in the Project. She’d been waiting for so long for her chance to prove that she was as capable in the field as anyone else, if she’d been given a mission then…

Connie’s eyes fell back on the word ‘recovered’.

Were the triplets—

She slammed the PC shut.

She didn’t remember walking back to her bunk.

The gentle touch of warm lips against her forehead stirred her from her fitful rest and a quiet hush told her to go back to sleep, fingers combing through her hair until she buried her face in her pillow. Distantly, as if coming through water, she heard South mill around the room getting ready for the day ahead as she lay there, feigning sleep.

It was the sharp hiss of the closing door that finally dragged her head above water, gasping for air.

What time was it?

< _The time is 0613 hours._ >

She couldn’t have had more than five hours sleep and going by her pounding head, it was much, much less.

 _Fuck_.

Groaning, she forced her eyes open. No blinding overhead lights burned them. South, god bless her, had dimmed them before leaving, to let Connie get her sleep before her own alarm in forty-five minutes or so.

Such a normal detail in a morning that couldn’t have felt more detached from normal.

Her PC was back under her bed, across the room. She didn’t remember doing that, either.

There was a moment, as she pulled herself out of bed and crawled across the floor, that she fooled herself into thinking that maybe it was all just a nightmare. That she’d returned to her place next to South after Carolina had left, instead of taking her PC and leaving for the observation deck.

That moment was shattered when the screen turned on.

Quickly, she hit a shortcut and ended all processes. The screen fell dark, then flashed with the triplicate symbol as it rebooted.

Connie fell back against her bedframe.

It was real. The triplets were…

Hand flying to cover her mouth, she dry heaved. Nausea twisted her stomach into knots, and it was another five minutes before she could breathe normally, again, without feeling like she was going to throw up.

How had they gone on a mission and— and _died,_ without anyone noticing?

How had _three agents_ vanished without a trace, and yet everyone’s first assumption was that they’d dropped out? That they’d left?

Where was the announcement? Where was the _acknowledgement_ of three lives lost, in the service of the Project that had never so much as given them the chance to prove their potential?

Connie plucked her shrike from her bedside table and, holding it tightly, she took deep, even breaths.

When had it happened?

When was the last time she’d seen the triplets, alive and well?

There’d had made… a jump, not more than a month before they finally left Oriens. Not a long jump, not the kind that forced the ship into cryosleep; a mere four days there and back, a convenient slipspace column that had guided the _Invention_ in its pursuit of an enemy signature. With everyone awake, nothing had changed besides the lack of missions; the days flowed by like any other.

It hadn’t seemed weird, at the time. Even with all power of hindsight, the memory barely stood out. The details of it had faded into innocuity.

The signal had been a red herring. They’d chased it down, only to come out the other end and find nothing. They stayed only long enough to prepare for the jump back—a few hours, at most.

Connie remembered glancing out of a window and seeing a planet, blanketed in white.

(Charybdis-IX?)

But when had she seen the Triplets, before then? When was the last time she saw her friends _alive?_

Focusing on the catch and tug of her nails against skin, she forced herself to remember.

She remembered seeing them in the training chamber, during the jump, running team exercises as they often did. She remembered waving at Ohio from the window, distracting her for just a moment too long. She remembered Iowa running into her on a flaming mongoose, with Idaho not far behind, chasing him on foot.

She remembered laughing. One of the few times she’d laughed since the then-recent news about Resol.

Then she’d walked away and never seen them again. She’d barely even thought about them, until the stop at the _Spire._

Mass’s voice echoed in her head: _“Well, you_ have _been very busy up there in Alpha._ ”

Really, that was it, wasn’t it?

The answer to all of those questions. The answer to _why_ , why no one had noticed or cared when the Triplets disappeared without a trace.

They weren’t in Alpha. No, they were the opposite.

They were the worst of the best, and that wasn’t good enough.


	9. Dancing On Our Graves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/72829e9d693689f39f3d290f01f0d70f/da5e337af3f915ec-87/s640x960/ab5d24059e8e132c8fee70b5692708ab6ac440a2.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

“—imary objective is the capture, or the elimination, of the Insurrectionist Leader,” Carolina said, her words coming into focus at the will of an elbow jammed into Connie’s side. Glancing at Wash out of the corner of her eye, she made herself stand straighter and listen. “Latest intelligence places him aboard _Ferryman Station_ , which recently fell under insurrectionist control.”

A holographic schematic of the station was projected between them, the blue light reflecting from Carolina’s narrow visor.

“Our insertion point is on the far end of the facility.” Carolina pointed, and a branch of the station lit up red. “York will get us past the secure airlock. From there, Connecticut will gain access to their internal communications and direct us towards his real-time location.”

Right. That was why she was here.

“If we succeed in capturing the target, our extraction point will be the nearest docking port,” Carolina continued. “Niner will be on alert for our signal. If we do this right, it should be a quick in and out.”

“This is a valuable opportunity to weaken our enemy,” the Director said, standing at the head of the table with his arms folded behind his back. “The work you do today has the potential to make future assignments much, much easier. With that in mind, you are dismissed.”

“Yes, sir!” chorused the room, stances shifting to attention.

Connie fell into form a second too late and the Director’s eyes met hers. She straightened her back.

“Are you okay, Connie?” Wash said, as they took their seats in the back of the Pelican. “You seem kind of out of it.”

“I’m fine,” Connie lied, her tired, bag-laden eyes hidden under her helmet. “It’s just been a busy few days.”

“No kidding,” he said, without ever looking away. “…did you stay up all night working again?”

“Not all night,” she lied, again. She hadn’t even been working. No, the previous night had been spent lying awake, alternating between staring at the ceiling and the PC laying across the room. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to open it since the morning after…

She swallowed the lump rising in her throat.

It had been barely two days. She needed to find out more, but the thought of doing so still made her stomach turn.

Wash’s body language unwound and he chuckled. “Oh Connie… good to know some things haven’t changed.”

Connie bit her tongue so hard she tasted iron.

He didn’t know, she reminded herself. He didn’t know.

The back of the Pelican was soon filled by the inane chatter of Wash and York, who mercifully stopped trying to include her after the first failed attempt. Up in the cockpit, she caught bits and pieces of Carolina running through the details of their extraction with Niner again.

Life was going on as normal, because to everyone else, nothing had changed. She had no choice but to try and go along with it.

York got them past the _Ferryman’s_ secure airlock without setting off any alarms and Carolina got Connie a shortcut into their internal communications, via a knocked-out grunt pulled into a dead-end corridor.

The leader’s callsign was active, broadcasting from multiple floors above them. A little extra digging gave her the floorplan and a rough analysis of the quickest, quietest path to his location. Service elevators and corridors gave them a clear route with minimal risk.

Still, for a station supposedly overrun by the Insurrection, it seemed quiet.

Connie had expected them to encounter Insurrectionist technicians or other soldiers, wandering the pathways that wove the _Ferryman’s_ structural skeleton together. Takeovers came with the risk of reclamation; if the takeover had been recent, then they should have been prepared to counter any incoming forces at short notice. Instead, they seemed dormant. Relaxed.

York, of course, put it down to good fortune. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you guys!” he said, as if uncanny luck like this was ever as simple as it seemed.

“Well now you’ve jinxed us,” Wash said.

“Keep the channel clear, you two. This ‘gift horse’ could turn and bite us at any second,” Carolina ordered, and the comms. fell silent.

The jinx finally hit when they reached the source of the ‘leader’s’ signal.

They’d split up and were approaching the target room from two sides, Wash and Connie from the east and York and Carolina from the west, through service corridors that connected to the otherwise isolated chamber. Carolina’s status light flashing orange was their first indicator that something was wrong.

CL//: <I have eyes on the target, but it’s not the leader. It’s that little one, with the braid.>

Connie frowned. Stepping up as close to the tunnel’s exit as she dared, she peered between the grating.

Carolina was right. There, sat on a swivel chair and spinning aggressively in circles, was the ridiculously short Insurrectionist ODST with equally ridiculous braid that whipped around behind them like, well, a whip.

NY//: <wait so are they really the leader?>

CT//: <no, York, it just means they’re broadcasting on the leader’s personal frequency>

WA//: <a decoy?>

CT//: <looks like it, the only indication we had the leader was here was activity under his name>

WA//: <what does that mean for the objective?>

Connie shrugged at him, straining to better see through the grated exit. It was a simple server room, one of multiple on the station. Other than the towers of servers, the only things in the room were a maintenance terminal, the chair the Innie was still spinning around on, and a vent in the ceiling.

Glancing up, Connie saw a matching vent above their position.

CT//: <there’s a maintenance terminal, I could probably pull more data from the servers if I got to it>

CL//: <We’ve come this far. If you think you can salvage something from this assignment, then we’ll give it a try.>

CT//: <there’s a shaft above the room, I’ll climb up, you draw their attention and I’ll get in to set up a remote download>

WA//: <how are you planning to get up there?>

Connie turned back to him and tilted her head.

WA//: <oh, right>

One leg-up from Wash later and she was in the ceiling, crawling slowly through the ventilation void towards the server room entrance. More quietly said than done, but Connie was careful. Each movement of her limbs was considered and slow. It took her almost five minutes to reach the vent, but the Innie beneath her didn’t hear a peep until the team were ready.

A loose bolt thrown down a side passage was enough to catch their attention.

Skidding to a stop mid-spin, they tilted their head and stood up, peering down the passage and turning their back on the room in the process.

They were walking away when Connie shifted just a little bit too far and the vent gave way beneath her.

Pain radiated down her spine where she landed atop the metal grating, her aching head ringing from the crash. Her comm. flashed with notifications, but behind the constant pings and text flying by, stood a very small, very alert Innie pointing a gun directly at her face.

Connie flinched, but they didn’t pull the trigger.

“Y'know, I trusted the fuckin' Weather Girls,” they said, an arrangement of words that only served to daze Connie further, “but I don't think this is what they meant when they said ‘it's raining men’.”

“Wh-What—”

And then they knocked her upside the head with the butt of the pistol.

Thrown back against the floor, Connie groaned and forced herself to her feet again just in time for the alarms to start blaring and the Innie to come at her, this time with a headbutt aimed squarely for her throat.

Dodging out of the way, she ducked past them and struck back with a kick, only for her foot to find air. Connie only caught the flick of the end of a braid as they disappeared into one of the connecting tunnels, one too small for anyone else to follow.

“ _Fall back_ , _Agent Connecticut,_ ” Carolina said, all need for silence gone. “ _I’ve sent our new EVAC point to your HUDs. We’re leaving._ ”

“Yes, boss,” Connie said without argument. The terminal was right there, she could have begged for more time and clawed free a win from this mission, one way or another, but she found she had no will to do so.

Partial or total failure, the Director had proved that all that mattered was that you _had_ failed.

Her rank was dropped from 7th to 9th before they’d even made it on board the Pelican.

Debriefing was nothing but a glorified dressing down, battering words masked under the guise of military discipline that would have stung, if Connie could bring herself to care. The blue light of the leaderboard cast the Director in a threatening silhouette, his shoulders squared, and his head tilted up, as if to look down at her from as high as a point as possible.

Connie tilted her own back to match.

“I expect better of an agent of Alpha Squad, Agent Connecticut,” he said, a hard stare hidden behind his impenetrable lenses. The admonishment was coming to its close. “Are you not an infiltration specialist? Is this not your area of expertise?”

“It is, sir,” she said, standing tall.

“Then how is it, agent, that you acted with such ineptitude?” Before she could open her mouth to answer, he snapped, “Such mistakes will not be tolerated. Consider your new rank a warning, _Connecticut_. A place amongst Alpha Squad is as easily revoked as it is granted.”

Swallowing the retort that formed a snake in her throat and threatened to make her tongue its head, she nodded. “Understood, _sir_.”

His mouth pressed into that thin, tight line. “Dismissed.”

Connie was out of the door before the others even dropped out of attention.

The locker room had too many people in it, Betas and Gammas filtering in and out as sessions ended and begun. Connie blew past waves and a call of her name to find the quiet of the adjoining room, the one that looked out onto the hallway with the giant, six position leaderboard that hung over agents just trying to remove their gear.

No escape. The leaderboard was always there, everywhere you turned.

Wrenching off her helmet, she dropped onto the bench with her head in her hands.

Out of the Director’s sight, whatever front of bravado she’d put on crumbled.

The numbers didn’t matter, anymore. Whatever remaining weight she placed on her rank had died with the realisation that the Triplets had died for theirs. Her place in Alpha, however? That meant _everything_. The threat had hit closer to home than she was proud of, her heart racing a mile a minute in her chest and her nerves alight with something between fear and rage.

She couldn’t make mistakes like that. No matter what was happening here, if she was going to do anything (if, _if_ ) then she had to stay where she was.

She _had_ to stay where she was.

Fingernails dug into her scalp. Deep breaths, Connie. Deep breaths.

She’d almost averted the meltdown when the sound of armoured boots against the metal floor crashed through the silence.

“It wasn’t your fault, Connie,” Wash said, well-meaning and harmless and yet utterly, _utterly_ infuriating.

“Easy for you to say,” she said. He was sitting pretty at number six, the middle of the pack, where he always was. “You didn’t drop the ball.” And he never rocked the boat.

“The ball got dropped. We were all there, it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

Connie tasted iron. “Dammit, _why_ are you _doing_ that?”

“What am I doing?” Wash said, and she could just imagine the stupid little raise of his hands in innocent confusion. The look on his face under his helmet, big brown eyes wide and unsure.

“Making excuses for me. I’m _not_ making excuses for _myself_. Why are you?”

“I’m trying to make you feel better.”

“Yeah? _Great,_ ” she bit, twisting to look back at him over her shoulder. “Hey, why don’t you go make Carolina feel better? Go pat Maine on the head? See how that works out for you.”

“We all make mistakes—”

“No! _We_ don’t. That’s the point!” Suddenly on her feet and facing him, features twisted with rage, she snatched up her helmet with a horrible scraping noise that made them both flinch. “We don’t all make mistakes! Some of us very specifically _make mistakes_ and others don’t seem to make _any_ mistakes at all.”

How many ‘mistakes’ had the Triplets made, before their lives were deemed _unimportant?_ How many had South made, before it was decided she was the twin who had to follow the other’s lead?

How many other agents had the Project left to die or left to stagnate, because the Director was no longer satisfied with what they had to offer him?

“Connie, c’mon—” Wash said, taking a step towards her.

Connie turned away.

“That’s why they’re doing all this! These _missions_ , the _rankings!_ They’re drawing a line between us, Wash, and you’re either on one side of that line, or you’re on the other,” she said, bracing her hands against the wall, using it to support her weight as she slumped. “And it’s getting pretty goddamn clear which side I’m on.”

Pain radiated through her shoulder, a harmless but intruding hand grasping the muscle. “No one thinks like that,” Wash said. “We’re a team.”

Gritting her teeth, Connie shook the hand loose. “I’m _not_ talking about you guys. I mean them,” she jerked her head towards the leaderboard. “ _Him._ ”

“The Director?” Wash asked, with innocent disbelief. “He’s given us everything. He’s helping us.”

It was all Connie could do not to laugh in his face.

She knew what he meant; she knew where the idea came from. None of them would be here without the Director, every agent on the ship would be in prison or _worse_ if not for the Project. That was the problem. Loyalty was something the Director thought he could buy, and the worst thing was it had _worked_.

Washington, a man who had knocked a CO unconscious for putting soldiers’ lives on the line, now did little more than humour her questions. Even _she’d_ been complacent, letting false promises of transparency and a way out of prison time become blinders to sense.

The blinders were off, now.

“ _Helping_ us?” she said. “Wake up, wake the _fuck_ up. He’s _filtering_ us. This is a _selection_ _process_ , Wash. I don’t know for _what_ , but— if you’re not at the top of that board you’re not worth _anything_ to him.”

“You’re just overreacting,” Wash said and this time, it was all she could do not to grab him, to shake him and make him _listen_ , for once, _really_ listen _._ “You’ve always been hard on yourself, Connie.”

 _“Not_ as hard as they are.” The sharp thunk of metal on metal filled the room as she slammed her helmet into his arms, his hands instinctively flying up to catch it. “Not _nearly_ as hard as they’re going to be.”

A beat of heavy silence fell over the small room. Washington had nothing left to say, staring after her from behind the reflective visor as she turned her back on him, hiding the way her face fell.

She could feel the borders of the world closing in around her, the tips of her fingers numb.

“And don’t call me Connie,” she said, the words falling from her lips on a rage-filled whim. “Makes me sound like a fucking kid. Call me CT.”

The few steps it took to reach the hallway felt like a mile.

Wash was one of her best friends. She just wanted him, _needed_ him, to understand. He questioned things, just like she did—he humoured her as a mask for his own concerns, she’d _seen_ it—but the throes of a meltdown were rapidly approaching and this conversation had to end, before she said something worse. Something else she’d regret.

“Oh and, that line that I talked about? You better hurry up and figure out what side you’re on, Agent Washington,” she said, swallowing that venomous snake in her throat that so wanted to take her words for its own. “Before they figure it out for you.”

She could feel his gaze burning a hole in her spine as she left.

She held it together just long enough to reach the bunk before the meltdown hit full force, rendering her useless for the next few hours. Only the dead space in her schedule following the mission spared her from the onslaught of beeping from her band, or the lingering threat of demotion.

When South returned, at the end of her day’s schedule and after multiple missed messages, she found her partner curled up amidst blankets with eyes as filled with frustration as they were with tears. She offered Connie her arms and Connie clambered into them without any of the hesitation that blocked the words that caught in the back of her throat.

Tired and emotionally drained, she just couldn’t make herself speak.

“It’s alright, mischief,” South said, words muffled where her lips pressed to the top of her head. “I fuckin’ get it. S’like you said, you’ll get your position back because you’re fuckin’ _you._ ”

Clinging ever tighter to her, Connie couldn’t bring herself to tell her that it was more complicated than that.

Instead, she nodded and buried her face against her shoulder.

Exhaustion claimed her, that night; two days of fitful or entirely absent sleep compounded by the meltdown overrode everything that would otherwise have threatened to keep her awake. Whilst far from the best night’s sleep she’d ever had, being piled under those blankets and tucked into the curve of South’s body was comfortable. Comfortable enough for her to get the rest she needed.

And in the morning, she dug the PC from under her bed and, in a stolen hour before her first session, turned one of of her filters onto the Project’s files. Keywords: Agent Ohio, Idaho, and Iowa.

Later, when everyone else was eating and settling down for the evening, she slipped away and looked at what it had found.

Their personnel files were at the top of the list, but she’d seen them before. She already knew the stories that had brought them here to the Project, the low-level crimes that had been enough to sign their fates away to Project Freelancer. The only thing that had changed was their status, switched from _active_ to _KIA._

She had to take a deep breath when she read that.

Next, she pulled up the mission report that had started all of this. With a clearer head, she scanned the included training records and psychological profiles. The statistics spoke for themselves; their records on the training floor were poor, their raw skill outshone by their individual failings. Ohio’s anxiety; Iowa’s improperly treated brain injury; Idaho valuing his friends over any promotion. They were not the agents that the Project had hoped for, the things that made them manipulatable were the very things that made them liabilities.

The only place they truly excelled was teamwork. Despite all their failings, Idaho, Iowa and Ohio were an impeccable fireteam, when push came to shove.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to save them.

The data told her nothing she didn’t already know, but there was something interesting about the file itself: according to her software, the reported contents of the file didn’t account for its size. Another level of encryption was hiding something and, after stripping it away, that information added a whole new layer to the story of the Triplets’ disappearance.

The report was expanded into a log that detailed every stage of the ‘mission’, from the so-called briefing to the _Mother of Invention’s_ departure from the Charybdis system a mere hour after their boots had hit the ground. An automatic transcript of orders given to F.I.L.S.S. betrayed the disconnection of all communications to the three agents the second they left the Pelican, cutting them off from not only any real mission objective, but from calling for help.

A sense of dawning horror settled over Connie, her gut twisting into fresh knots.

The mission hadn’t gone wrong. There had never _been_ a mission.

The Project had sent the Triplets down there to die.

If she hadn’t felt sick before, she did then and yet still, it wasn’t _enough._ She needed more.

Connie minimised the file and scanned through the rest, but she found nothing else she could use. Training reports, requisitions forms, personal logs, communication logs—the records of their lives at the Project, reduced to raw data that couldn’t tell her anything about what had happened to them.

Taking another deep breath, she adjusted the filters and set it to scan for reports of deaths in the program and left it to work.

When she finally made it to the rec room, almost two hours later than usual and having barely scrounged up enough to eat from the ravaged mess hall, she told them she’d been working and told herself that she wasn’t _really_ lying—though she knew that she was.

It was the first of many not-lies she would find herself telling over the coming week.

Her second not-lie came the following day, when she told Washington that she couldn’t make their usual lunch meet-up because she had more work to do than expected. He didn’t respond, after that; it must have sounded like a blow-off, like Connie was giving him excuses so as not to face him after their argument. They hadn’t talked the previous night in the rec room. Though he’d settled at her feet as he always did, the tension between them was palpable and Connie hadn’t had the energy to try and allay it.

That day, she didn’t have the time.

The filter had turned up a mountain of statistics about deaths in every branch of the Project’s operations. In the forty-five minutes or so she managed to find during her lunch break, she only had the chance to scan over the deaths amongst the agents—now at four, not counting the Triplets.

Rhode Island had died long before the Triplets; the first death amongst the agents, a mere week before the board had been revealed. Connie remembered Ohio telling her and seeing the announcement on the news board, once she knew to look for it. A sniper round to the skull. There was nothing anyone could have done.

Minnesota had miscalculated the range of his explosives on a mission. Kentucky had crashed his Falcon gunship after losing a wing to enemy fire. Agents died in the line of duty like anywhere else in the war and Connie began to wonder if the Triplets were the only suspicious deaths in the Project, until she found Tennessee.

One rank above the Triplets, he’d died during the early days of their assignment in Luminous-VI. Shot in the gut by an insurrectionist, his distress signal had been relayed to the recovery team _late_. Instead of extracting him, Command had sent them to rescue his team, who had reported their situation to be stable. Officially, it was chalked up to a miscommunication, but the same Level 0 Directive was attached to his file.

With the sharp beep of her band’s five-minute warning, she had just enough time to stow her PC and push down the new wave of righteous rage before she had to be on the training floor.

Her fifth was when she told South she’d gone for a walk, one night, when the walk had only been as far as the observation deck. It was the first chunk of time she’d had that was long enough to sift through the statistics on the simulation bases, every other stolen moment of time too short to waste.

Ever since First Hold, she’d made a concerted effort to avoid any deaths during any simulation mission she was sent on. Those statistics told her that the same could not be said for anyone else. Agents in all squads had sim trooper casualties on record. Almost 50% of active simulations ended up in the death or serious injury of at least one of the volunteer soldiers involved—figures that didn’t even account for deaths that occurred without Freelancer intervention.

Simulation troopers were being treated as little but cannon fodder for Freelancers to test their skills on. Worse, perhaps, was that no one seemed to care.

For all its promises, for all of the Director’s talk about saving humanity, Project Freelancer was _haemorrhaging_ soldiers at an entirely avoidable rate. It was exactly the kind of negligence that had made her act back on Resol, but… it wasn’t _enough,_ not here.

For every detail that made another knot form in her stomach, there was the nagging thought that she needed _more._ Project Freelancer was a bigger fish than _Lockson Industries_. Not only did it have the weight of ONI at its back, but, for all its _lies_ , the Project was still responsible for the testing and implementation of new technology that was meant to help end this war. The stakes were higher here.

If she didn’t find more, then the best she would be able to do was document and hope she lived long enough to report it when— _if—_ the war ended.

Though as she settled back into bed beside South, whose arms wrapped tightly around Connie even in unconsciousness, Connie couldn’t shake the sense that she’d find what she was looking for.

What exactly that was, she still didn’t know.

Not-lie number nine was to Mass, who asked her if she’d have her final piece of coding finished for TURNCOAT by the end of the month.

“Of course,” she’d said, despite not having looked at the software since she’d fallen headfirst into command’s servers and knowing she wouldn’t look again for a while yet. “What else would I be doing?”

Mass had raised a brow at her and Connie flinched, internally, realising she’d answered a question ze hadn’t asked.

“I’m not even going to ask,” ze said, shaking zir head. “Just get it done.”

Between daily sessions with Mass, when she should have been working independently on TURNCOAT, she was sorting through the latest collection of data uncovered by the software she’d been working on instead. She’d charged gears, her filters set to scan through data relating to the Project’s core operations—the things the UNSC would care about, if something was amiss.

There were two key targets: proof that Project Freelancer had been withholding or falsifying information about the Insurrectionists, and the documentation on the experimental armour units the Director was responsible for. The former was an ongoing process. Whilst she had the benefit of being able to examine certain files without false credentials, it did little to counteract the issue that much of the data she _hadn’t_ seen before was stored on a level deeper than she currently had access to.

The latter, on the other hand, was so easy that she had set aside the information for a moment when she hadn’t got enough time to work on the Insurrectionist data. When that moment finally came, she realised that had been a mistake.

Tucked into the corner of her bed, her screen further shielded by a blanket, she skimmed over the names of the files until she found her own. _Holographic Projection Unit – Agent Connecticut._ The data inside was exactly what she had expected: manufacturer details, version number, functionality, but something else caught her eye only on the second glance through. Hidden amongst the wall of text describing the unit’s core functions in great detail was a small section header:

 _<_ Theoretical Effects Upon Functionality When Paired with an Artificial Intelligence Unit>

Connie’s brow furrowed. Artificial Intelligence Unit _._ That was new.

The section was much smaller than the information after which it followed. The ‘theoretical effects’ on the unit’s functions included prolonged projection times; increased number of simultaneous projections; more complex movements; and, most importantly, it removed the need for a pipeline to command.

Checking a random selection of the other units, she found the same thing.

It answered a question that had been on everyone’s minds since the units were introduced: how the units were supposed to be used on the battlefield if they required a constant power source.

Connie didn’t know much about AI. She’d interacted with AI, everyone had; AI were a part of day-to-day life, both in and outside of the military. Cities were run by infrastructural AI that controlled everything from public transport to ATMs. The one in her city had been called Dos. Here on the _Mother of Invention_ , F.I.L.S.S. filled essentially the same role in a military capacity.

However, both of those AI, and every other she’d had dealings with during her life, were Dumb AI. This was not a job for a Dumb AI; no, something as complex and dynamic as this required a Smart AI. Connie knew next to _nothing_ about those.

Just like that, she was out of her depth and out of time for the day.

When South asked her what she’d been up to, when she arrived a few minutes late to their makeshift date night hidden in the corner of the hangar far away from everyone else, she told her tenth not-lie.

“Just working,” she said, fitting herself up against the line of South’s body. “Mass and I are supposed to deliver this TURNCOAT program not long after the next mission. Sorry, I just lost track of time.”

Neither sentence was a lie. Not in isolation.

So why did her chest feel tight, when South just nodded and kissed her?

Number thirteen was told to Carolina, when she bumped into her late at night as she was leaving her bunk and Carolina was returning. Lights-out was in effect and Carolina’s hair was wet, her civvies fresh from her locker and a towel loosely hung around her shoulders.

“Trouble sleeping again,” Connie said, clutching the PC in her arms a little tighter. “I’m going to try and get a little extra work done, but the light from the screen would keep South up.”

Carolina used the towel to dab dribbles of water that threatened to roll into her eyes. “As much as I admire your dedication, try not to stay up too long, Connie.”

“Oh, um— it’s CT now, boss,” Connie said, though the new abbreviation still felt weird on her tongue. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell South to call her that, yet, but more often than not she was ‘mischief’ to her, these days.

Carolina raised a brow, but nodded. “Alright, CT. The point still stands. Get some rest.”

Connie waited until she entered her room down at the end of the hall, then turned to head for the observation deck.

Her latest search was… bolder.

There were no files on AI at this level of clearance, but she hadn’t expected there to be. Going down another level was a risk she wasn’t yet willing to take; it’d take time to build a spoofed profile that wouldn’t draw suspicion or to worm her way in through a hole in their security. No, to get what she needed she was going to have to think outside of the box.

The Director’s personal logs weren’t as heavily encrypted as the Project’s more classified data.

It had taken a couple sessions of work; she didn’t have the Director’s credentials, but he used the Project standard encryption. He likely hadn’t expected his own logs to be the target of any possible breach and in most situations, it wouldn’t be her first port of call. Even then, she expected anything truly important to be filed away out of reach. What she was hoping to find was something seemingly innocuous, something he wouldn’t have thought to hide.

She found it in the form of two drafts of an announcement, one dated months before the other, titled ‘The Goals of Project Freelancer’.

They both started the same way. 

<As you are all aware, Project Freelancer has been granted the opportunity to test a variety of experimental equipment designed to enable an individual soldier to better perform against our Covenant enemies.>

Connie had heard him say similar things many times. Where it got interesting, and where it began to differ, was a couple of lines later.

<…in pursuit of this goal, Project Freelancer has been permitted the use of an Artificial Intelligence Unit. We are testing more than technology; we are testing the potential for a single soldier to do the work of hundreds with the aid of a new kind of battlefield partnership.>

The second, more recent report was almost the same, with a couple of key differences. Everything singular had become multiple: unit to units, ‘a single soldier’ to ‘individual soldiers’.

Multiple AI for multiple soldiers with multiple units. In isolation it wouldn’t have seemed all that suspicious, but there had been a period of months where the Director was working under the assumption that they would receive only a _single_ AI unit.

What had changed? Had ONI granted them permission to use extra? Would they, after only previously permitting one? That seemed unlikely. ONI wasn’t known for its leniency, pestering them for months to change a decision was more likely to get you on a watchlist than to get you results.

For all she didn’t know about Smart AI, she did know one thing. The safeguarding of Smart AI and the information they held was mandated under the Cole Protocol. Having a single AI in the field was surely a risk, multiple seemed like something that would never be permitted under normal circumstances.

Not that an experimental project was exactly ‘normal circumstances’.

Pressing her palms into her eyes, willing the encroaching drowsiness away, Connie groaned. This was too far out of her area of expertise. She didn’t want to take unnecessary risks, but to understand what was going on here…

There was a chance some of her old contacts, from the secure network she’d used back in her days on Resol, were still around. One of them had been a bit of an AI nut, a little bit wrapped up in conspiracy theories, but she knew more than Connie did.

Taking a deep breath, she forced a connection to the superluminal communications relay and this time, unlike all those months ago when she tried to contact her mothers, she scrambled her signal.

It was a longshot—one in a million—but she had to try.

There was nothing she could do but try.

After about a week straight of not-lies and work, Connie _finally_ felt like she was making progress. A convenient open slot in her schedule had given her a stretch of time where she didn’t have to explain to anyone where she was. She’d been able to sit down and bury her nose in the Director’s personal logs until she found something he’d missed.

There was an audio log entry where he mentioned experiments that had ‘failed to produce viable results’. He believed that they still required something else, an unnamed asset that wasn’t hard to tie to the unnamed asset their sights had been on for weeks.

That was the extent of the information she’d found. She’d spent the rest of the time she had trying to find any other reference to experiments, but only that single log had slipped through the cracks.

Satisfied with what she’d found, for now, she allowed herself to put the PC away and head towards the mess hall. The halls seemed remarkably quiet, for the time of day; usually there would be agents and support soldiers filtering in and out of the mess, but she saw next to no one as she made her own way there.

She’d just pulled up her messages, to see if she’d missed something when it was muted, when she bumped into the yellow armoured figure of Montana who’d all but sprinted from an adjacent hall. 

“Whoa! What’s the rush, Monty?” she asked, jumping back.

Monty skidded to a stop, turning on their heel. “Hey Connie!” She opened her mouth to correct them, but they just kept talking. “Haven’t you heard? There’s a big display match happening down on the training floor! Three versus one!”

“Three versus one?” Connie blinked. “That’s unusual.”

“It’s some new agents’ initiation match or _something_ , I don’t know, but Louisi said it’s really kicking off sooo, I’m gonna run,” Monty said, gesturing back over their shoulder.

Connie waved them off. “Go ahead.”

As they left, Connie found no less than three messages from South telling her about the exact same thing. One came with a small video clip, of a black armoured agent walking away from a stumbling Maine. York and Wyoming were collapsed on the floor in the periphery.

Connie’s brow furrowed. No one in the Project had plain black armour.

The board on the wall at the back of the viewing bay announced that it was Round 3 – Lockdown Paint. Beneath it, two teams: Agents York, Maine and Wyoming versus Agent Texas.

The one name the Project had never assigned.

“There you fuckin’ are, mischief,” South said, beckoning her over. Connie stepped up to the window, on the opposite side of Wash, whose eyes remained squarely on the slaughter going down beneath them. The lockdown paint score was already at 0 – 3. “Where were you?”

“I had a free slot. I decided to use it as an actual break, for once,” she said. That one was a lie, and it settled uncomfortably in her chest. “What is going _on_ here?”

“Impromptu display match.”

“We thought they were breaking in a new recruit,” North said, stood back with his arms folded, “but it’s more like the new recruit is the one breaking them.”

South snorted. “No fucking kidding.”

“I didn’t know we were getting a new recruit,” Connie said. Usually, she would. Usually, she’d have been keeping an eye on the kind of chatter that was a precursor to such an arrival. Except she’d been busy, and there hadn’t been a new recruit in over a year.

“Neither did any of us,” Carolina said, tone clipped.

Connie turned her eyes to the floor just in time to see the team of three jump over the cement pillars in perfect unison—

Only to get shot down in perfect unison, hitting the ground like rocks.

“ _Ouch._ That’s gotta hurt,” Wash said. He bumped Connie with his shoulder, but then immediately tensed up, hesitation written into every muscle.

By the time Connie decided it was okay to bump back, the moment had passed.

It wasn’t _unusual_ for a new agent’s first introduction to be in the form of a training match. Connie herself had been pitted against Virginia, after her initial evaluations. Training fights served as a baseline, they made it easier to place agents in their starting squads. That was normal.

The unusual thing was that, in all the time she’d been with the Project, Connie had never known an introductory training match to be more than 1v1.

Hands curling into fists against the ledge, she watched the fight.

Agent Texas was a pillar of shadow, only the bright gold of her visor disrupting what was otherwise almost a perfect silhouette created by the dark sheen of her armour. Built like a brick shithouse and hitting with all the weight of one, she was a force of nature on the floor. Running circles around the three seasoned agents, who had been in the top ten for as long as Connie could reasonably remember, was like nothing to her.

By the fifth round, her opponents hadn’t hit her a single time. Whatever upper hand the trio gained was lost in seconds. They knocked her gun from her hand? No problem, she just used theirs instead and shot York directly in the dick with so many rounds you’d think his crotch had personally offended her. One of them distracted her whilst the other went to attack? She hit them both without issue, taking out the attacking party without even _looking_ at him.

They watched her _kick_ a frozen Maine _at_ York and keep fighting afterwards.

“If I kicked Maine like that, I’m pretty sure I’d have a compound fracture,” Wash said. He was probably right.

“She is fucking _brutal_ ,” South said, when Texas shot Wyoming in the face point-blank as he lay propped against a pillar. “It’s kinda hot.”

“South, really?” North said. South flipped him the bird.

< _Another point for Texas._ >

Calling the fight a display match was accurate; nothing about the spectacle taking place on the training floor suggested that it had been intended as anything but a show. Texas was wiping the floor with her opponents, moving with speed and strength that bordered on unnatural. If it wasn’t for her height—barely an inch or two above York and Wyoming—Connie would have suspected her of being another Spartan in their midst.

< _After 8 rounds, the score is 0 – 8. Advantage: Texas. >_

With every passing round, the hackles on the back of Connie’s neck raised higher, anticipation pooling in her spine. If this was a show, then as entertaining as the haplessness of the trio was, this was only the warm-up. The main attraction was still to come.

 _< Round 9 begins in five… four… three… two… one! Round 9, begin._>

No sooner had the final syllable fell than a barrage of bullets splintered the pillars and sent shrapnel _flying_.

Connie’s eyes widened. That hadn’t been _exactly_ what she was expecting, but—

“What?!” Wash exclaimed beside her, the only one in the bay to move. “Are they using live rounds on the training floor?”

“Looks like it,” South said.

“That’s against protocol, they’re gonna kill her!” Wash was gesticulating wildly, looking around the group as if to try and inspire similar outrage, but even Connie couldn’t bring herself to expend the energy.

“Probably,” she said, watching as Texas dove effortlessly out of the way of every round.

“Someone should get the Director!”

The bitter laugh erupted from her before she could stop it. “The Director? Who do you think gave them the ammo?”

“Watch your mouth, CT,” Carolina snapped, fingers rapping against her gauntlet.

Connie held her tongue, but she knew she was right and so did Carolina. One of them just wasn’t willing to admit it.

Wash found his place at the window again, but his fingers were curled against the ledge, digging into the metal.

It wasn’t hard to trace his gaze to Maine, his head following them wherever they went.

Maine had that no-nonsense air about them that came out on missions, under orders. There was no hesitation in the shots fired by either them or Wyoming; they chased down Texas like hunters following prey. Any pillar she took refuge behind crumbled, the training floor collateral damage in their determined onslaught.

Texas didn’t seem fazed. York, however, was another story.

He chased her down, but not to shoot her. It had taken a moment for Connie to notice, but York hadn’t fired a single shot; his pistol was still loaded with the distinctive pink mag of the lockdown paint.

He was the Washington of the fight, determinedly idealistic as everyone else pretended it was business as usual. Any attempt to ‘help’ Texas only earned him a close-up view down a gun barrel.

She didn’t _need_ his help, that much was clear. A renewed assault from Wyoming and Maine was fought off with ease until a stray bullet caught her in the shoulder, sending sparks—

Wait _, sparks?_

“Did anybody see—?” Connie started, just in time for all hell to break loose.

Wyoming, now little but a mass of pink paint, was thrown headfirst into a pillar with so much force it _cracked_ and then Maine was _charging_ , turning the same pillar into dust and shrapnel, throwing Wyoming loose and York into the ground. Tex rolled out of the way and was up like a shot, two pistols firing and a sharp kick to Maine’s chest launching them back into another pillar and—

They heard the shout before they saw the grenade.

“ _Hey!_ ”

York fell, Tex’s arm sparked and a flurry of pink spread across gold in the instant before an explosion rocked the floor and sent shrapnel so high it hit the viewing bay glass.

“Dammit, those maniacs!” Wash shouted beside her, the ledge vibrating as his fists slammed against it.

Behind her, Connie heard North cursing, “What the fuck are they doing?!” as the others turned and ran, armoured boots thundering across the ground. Carolina was quickly at Connie’s side, pushing her out of the way to hit the intercom and call F.I.L.S.S. into action. Sirens began to blare.

All whilst Connie stood frozen, staring wide eyed at the charred armour speckled with pink laying on the ground as the smoke drifted away.

Was York _moving?_

Maine and Tex were already shaking off the explosion and Wyoming rolled onto his side, aching but alive. York was still, dead still, until his leg moved barely a few inches and Connie felt like she could breathe again.

What had just _happened?_

Finally willing herself to go, she followed in the wake of the others. She’d just reached the threshold of the floor when she caught sight of the Director and the Counselor moving in from the opposite entrance, down from their private viewing bay connected to the bridge. The Director was walking with purpose and Connie stopped, hiding out of sight behind the edge of the door.

Everyone fell into line the second the Director started yelling.

“You should be _ashamed_ of yourselves!” he said, pacing the line. Connie shrunk back as his gaze passed between heads. “I expect you to act as a _team._ ”

“They used live ammunition on the floor, sir,” Wash said, surprisingly defiant for him and yet only within the bounds of the rules. “That's against regulation.”

When the Director walked into him, forcing him to back away and sending the others outwards, even Connie felt the urge to step back. His face couldn’t have been more than inches from Wash’s visor and Wash _recoiled_. “Do you think our enemies will care about regulations on the battlefield, Agent Washington?!”

“So— y-you’re not punishing them?” Wash said, and there was the idealism again, the belief that the Director was ‘helping’ them, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“Ingenuity and adaptability are admirable traits,” the Director said, standing over York.

His visor was cracked like a spider’s web, his armour charred by the explosion. The medics around him were stabilising him, preparing him to be moved. He was moving more, now, despite their best efforts to stop him.

Only when the Director went to leave did Connie step out from behind the door and head inside.

“You should all learn something from this,” he said, his back to them. “Dismissed.”

“Yeah,” Connie said, stepping up between Wash and South. Shock was still written into all of them, but Wash looked positively _stunned_. “You should learn something, alright.”

“I can’t believe this,” Wash said. His shoulders fell and he sounded so _genuinely_ incredulous, too.

Connie’s face fell behind her helmet. He still didn’t get it. She doubted that he was _ever_ going to get it.

 _Goddammit_.

“Don't forget to check your place on that list, Wash,” she said, and if the words came out sharper, more obnoxious, than she intended, she didn’t have the will to fix it.

Wash looked right at her, all the weight of eye contact falling on her even through the visor, for a long moment of silence— and then he walked away, pushing past to get to Maine who was already on their way off the floor.

“What were you _thinking?!_ ” he said, stopping Maine at the door.

Maine grunted. “Orders.”

“Orders?! Are you—” Throwing his hands in the air with a frustrated noise, he shoved Maine half-heartedly and stormed away. Maine followed quietly.

“Trouble in paradise, huh?” South said, coming up behind Connie. Connie gave her withering look, all of the attitude in her drained. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said, accepting an offered hand. Squeezing it grounded her.

York was being lifted onto a stretcher, by then. Texas was being guided out by strange, black and purple clad medics that had paid no attention to the actual injured on the floor. Texas’ armour still showed no signs of blood, hers or anyone else’s.

Connie frowned. What was all that about?

“Come on,” South said, tugging her by the hand.

Connie let her lead.

She’d never known the locker room so filled with agents and yet so quiet. The two viewing bays had emptied, almost everyone who had watched the fight was there either de-suiting or preparing for their final sessions of the day.

Connie’s final session would have been on the training floor. Obviously, that was no longer a possibility.

She de-suited in silence. North stood as a barrier between her and South, his locker sandwiched between theirs. The locker on the end had always been empty and South would always swing around, claim the space so they could chat, but the energy in the room was wrong. So instead, she waited.

When North finally left, they were down to their undersuits.

“So…” South said in a hushed tone, causing the hair on the back of Connie’s neck to raise until she caught the faint chatter that hid beneath the stifling atmosphere. “Real shake-up, out there, huh?”

“Yeah,” Connie said, setting her helmet on the shelf. The golden eyes stared back at her. “I… be careful, okay, South?”

South’s face softened in that way it did only for her and she stepped in front of her, half-sitting on the bench with her arms open. Connie leaned into them without hesitation, wrapping her own around South’s shoulders and letting her pick her up as she stood. Face pressed into the sliver of skin exposed between her jaw and neck, she inhaled.

“Okay, mischief,” South said, fingers in her hair. “Okay.”

Over her shoulder, as they pulled away, the light caught on the nameplate on the previously empty locker door.

Agent Texas.

Of course.

Board positions began to change within the hour. Wyoming displaced York at number two, which wouldn’t have been all that remarkable if not for the fact that York fell not to third, but to _sixth._ Whispers spread quickly, but to Connie it was obvious what had happened—he’d gotten in the way of the Director’s plans and he was being punished for it. His being wounded was secondary.

Maine rose to number three, the highest rank they’d ever achieved, whilst the reshuffle sent South down to number seven. Connie could see what had happened there, too. York’s placement at six kept him visible on every board. Unwilling to knock off Washington, South had been the obvious ‘sacrifice’.

South had almost broken her fist on the wall when the alert came through. She had to go and blow off some steam, after that.

Connie gave her space, as she always did. Knowing she’d be gone a while, and with everyone else so distracted, it even gave Connie a convenient moment to slip away to the observation deck without having to lie.

Though it felt weird, to think of it like that.

She had received no response from her old contact. Accounting for optimal transmission times, she’d have had time to answer. Non-optimal, on the other hand… by the time Connie could be _sure_ there was no response coming, it would have been too late. She needed to explore other options.

Since she’d sent the original message, it had become clearer than ever that whatever the Director was doing with AI was in violation of the Cole Protocol. Running experiments of any kind on an AI was a risk too great to take during this war, and whatever those experiments _were_ , the Director was doing his damnedest to hide them.

More than he was doing to hide the treatment of his agents. He knew what would slide in the eyes of the UNSC and what wouldn’t.

With her signal scrambled, Connie logged back into the secure network under her old pseudonym: Free Bird.

There were extra steps to posting ‘publicly’ within the network. Access was closely guarded, but that didn’t mean you got sloppy. Connie knew that as well as anyone. Her submission was a heavily encrypted and carefully phrased request for help with a possible Cole Protocol infraction, with more details for any responder she felt she could trust.

Her finger hovered over the send button for almost a minute before she clicked.

Getting a response was still a one-in-a-million chance. The network was quiet; the people behind the names she knew were all dead or busy with the war. If she wanted help, if she wanted to understand what was happening here, she needed to look closer to home.

Her fingernails caught at her scar.

Mass had a history with AI.

Ze had been stationed aboard the UNSC _Enigma_ ; a high-level technician doing much of the same work ze did here on the _Mother of Invention._ They programmed the ships’ front-facing systems and performed maintenance on them, leading to them working in close proximity with the ship’s AI, Wren. Circumstances eventually meant that Ze became one of the primary handlers of Wren’s upkeep after taking extra classes and learning through experience.

One day, something had gone wrong. The file was scant on detail and what details it gave, Connie didn’t fully understand. Something about the AI entering a state called rampancy and Mass’ subsequent partitioning of her code, that both saved the _Enigma_ from imminent danger on the other end of a slipspace corridor and was strictly against protocol.

Ze hadn’t even been transferred from the ship’s brig to a planetside cell before the Project had swooped in to offer zir a position.

The only reason Connie didn’t suspect ze’s involvement in what was going on was that Mass had always been _touchy_ , about it. What ze did was illegal, but it was to save the lives of zir crewmates. Those were principles Connie couldn’t fault.

So, not without hesitation, Connie sent Mass a simple message saying that they needed to talk and left it at that.

Though, Connie thought with a chuckle, Mass was almost less likely to respond than the network.

Checking the time, she decided she had just enough to take a look at this new agent’s file before she had to head back. Accessing personnel files was almost a welcome reprieve, a return to the familiar.

Agent Texas’ file looked like any other. Despite her suspicious arrival, it wasn’t encrypted further like Florida’s nor isolated from the rest of the files. There was a picture of a woman with blonde hair tied back into a regulation ponytail, with pale skin and a look of determination in her eyes. She was a Sergeant in the Marines before the Project, who had purportedly ‘gone rogue’ on assignment—though that was the extent of the detail supplied.

The only interesting note was under medical details. She had prosthetic limbs, covered in highly sophisticated fake skin. That, Connie supposed, could explain the weird sparks she’d seen. Maybe.

It read like any other file. Somehow, that only made Connie more suspicious.

She was about to give the file a second read through when she heard the door open behind her.

 _Shit_ , she didn’t think anyone would be down here besides—

“Uh— hey, CT,” Wash said, taking a seat beside her.

 _Oh_. Thank _god_.

Connie closed her PC and sat there, hands on the lid, in silence. Wash’s greeting hung in the air, caught on the tension, until he finally broke it a few minutes later.

“York’s uh… gonna be fine,” he said, chewing the inside of his cheek as he did. “Looks like he might lose an eye—” (“Oh _god._ ”) “—but he’ll live, at least.”

“Losing an eye is a big deal,” Connie said. “Flash cloned replacements take time. He could be medically discharged for that.”

“I know,” Wash said, sighing. “I’ve… had a word with Maine. They’re still saying it was orders. So, you were right, about who gave them the ammo.”

“You know, usually the opportunity to say ‘I told you so’ is a lot more satisfying,” Connie said, giving him a strained but genuine smile. Wash chuckled. “How… are things with them? Maine.”

“I’m angry. I’m really fucking angry,” Wash said, frankly. “We’ll work through it. They were just following their orders, and they said they couldn’t even see where the grenade landed. So… we’ll work through it.”

Connie hesitated before she rested a hand on Wash’s arm. “I’m sorry. Not— just for what Maine did. For snapping at you. I was on the brink of melting down and… since then I’ve been busy.”

Another not-lie for the pile.

“It’s fine,” Wash said, awkwardly patting her hand. “I know what the start of your meltdowns looks like.”

“I stand by what I said, though,” she said. “I haven’t liked the board from the moment it appeared, you know that.”

“I know.”

“I just don’t want us to lose sight of what’s important just because of a stupid leaderboard. Or because they gave us a second chance,” she continued, squeezing his arm. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Wash?”

Wash bit down. “…I had a meeting with internals, today.”

Oh.

Her hand fell away. “What about?”

“Transmissions coming from the ship, the Insurrection…” he said. Connie pulled her knees to her chest. “I told them I didn’t know anything, because I don’t.”

“But they thought you might?”

“I suppose so.”

Silence fell back over them. It was another minute before Connie swallowed her nerves enough to speak again.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I’ve just been tired and under a lot of pressure.”

“Tell me about it,” Wash said, with a sudden laugh. “It’s been _manic_ around here. We’re really gearing up to something big, aren’t we?”

“We sure are,” Connie said, because it was true. “Maybe you can get back at Maine by kicking their ass in training.”

“Oh, I will, I will,” he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “They won’t know what hit them. I’ll use that new knife hold and everything.”

“Make sure to slash—”

“—slash not stab, I know,” he said, elbowing her with another laugh. Connie managed to echo it, this time; it didn’t feel nearly as strained as it must have sounded. “You’ve taught me well.”

“I have,” she said. Resting her head on his shoulder, she sighed. “Of course I have.”

Wash wrapped his arm around her shoulders and that was the end of that.

And yet now, more than ever, she couldn’t tell him a thing.

Besides, ‘CT’s Question’ time didn’t have quite the same ring to it.


	10. Birds of a Feather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b0e03ec41a4cca278161d0207c6360bd/6fb3f63f12a2c5c4-8e/s640x960/7827493812e35fcc24daf4a8540fbe292b12f2f4.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

Connie was in the training chamber when Mass’s response came through.

With the training floor down for repairs and an important mission on the horizon, standard floor sessions had been replaced with group scenario training in the much larger training chamber usually used for more specialised scenarios. Crouched behind an overturned Warthog, training bullets rapping against the other side, she barely noticed the notification. Only when a second message popped up during a moment of brief silence did she truly register it and the name attached.

Mass had actually responded. That was surprise number one.

“—and I’ll cover you,” Wash said, the start of his sentence lost to Connie’s own distraction. “CT? Did you hear me?”

Connie shook her head. “Sorry, sorry—you’ll cover me and I do what?”

“Break for the door,” Wash said. “That work for you?”

“Yeah, of course. Sorry.” Grasping her training pistol, she nodded. “On your mark.”

Wash popped his weapon over the hog and provided covering fire as she made a run for the door, dodging past the team of South and North who’d been forced back into their own cover. Planting the _Spoofer_ , already calibrated for the chamber’s internal doors, she only had to wait a few seconds for it to force it to unlock.

“Open!” she called to Wash, looking back over her shoulder as she darted through the door.

Or, she would have, had she not collided faceplate first with Maine’s abdomen.

“…well, shit,” she said, the second before they knocked her on her ass.

South burst out laughing somewhere behind her. Connie couldn’t help but let out a breathless giggle, too.

Surprise number two came after the scenario was over, when she finally had the chance to open the messages.

MA//: <You’re actually contacting me outside of work hours? You must be desperate.>

MA//: <What exactly do you want to talk about?>

Mass had not only responded, but seemed willing to listen to whatever it was Connie had to say. Sitting in front of her locker, with everyone else de-suiting around her, Connie responded before she even took off her helmet.

Giving details over official channels wasn’t an option. The trick was making sure the logs didn’t give _that_ away, either.

CT//: <It’ll be easier to tell you in person. It’s too long to type out on my helmet and we have a session later, anyway.>

MA//: <You’re not just going to send me a wall of text? The shocks keep coming. Alright, fine. You better not be late then.>

CT//: <I won’t be. Don’t worry.>

Taking a deep breath, Connie pulled off her helmet and gave South a smile in response to something she’d said, but Connie hadn’t really heard.

She went about the next few hours like it was any other day, despite the fact that it was anything but. York had spent the past two days mostly unconscious thanks to a mix of surgery and painkillers; the exact fate of his wounded eye was still unclear. Carolina was clearly on edge, spending most of her time either in medical or in training rooms; every slot she could book, she’d taken. Maine and Wash were talking again, and so were Connie and Wash, but tension still hung in the air of the mess hall as they sat together. South seemed to be doing more talking than the rest of them combined.

The veneer of normality was cracked, but they kept pretending anyway.

At least she didn’t have to pretend when she fell into her seat beside Mass, dragging her hands down her face and groaning. Mass raised a brow at her, but ze had never been one to ask unnecessary questions or even extend a ‘how are you doing?’ towards her (not that she’d been any better). What was previously just a part of their begrudging working relationship now felt like a blessing in disguise. She didn’t have to lie, here.

“I’ll be ready to talk in a minute,” she said, when Mass finally went to open zir mouth. “Let me just… give me a minute.”

Mass didn’t say a word. Ze just kept working, probably on TURNCOAT again. It was on its third ‘final completion deadline’ now. Connie never had gotten back to the work she was supposed to do on it that last week.

“Okay,” she said, after almost five minutes of silence. Mass spun zir chair slowly towards her, brow raised again and zir arms folded. “Come over here, I have something to show you. In the code,” she said, hoping that the look she gave zir made it clear what she actually meant.

Mass rolled zir eyes and zir chair towards her, huddling up closer than either of them probably liked. It was smart, the position blocked the space in front of them from all of the cameras in the room.

“What is it?” ze asked, impatiently.

“Here,” Connie said, already typing on her data-pad. Connection disabled, she’d ensured the notepad feature wouldn’t autosave and left herself free to type anything she didn’t feel comfortable saying aloud. “There’s a mistake in the base code.”

On the data-pad, she wrote: <Command is hiding things. I’ve been suspecting it for a while, ever since I mentioned that Insurrectionist data that I couldn’t trace the origins of, but now I have proof.>

Mass looked at her and Connie rose her eyes to meet zirs, despite how it felt physically painful to do so.

After a drawn-out moment of consideration, Mass swallowed.

“Point it out to me,” ze said.

“Can’t you see it?” Connie said, typing as she talked. Mass leaned closer, feigning peering at the screen beneath the data-pad. “It’s why the program keeps failing.”

<The Triplets didn’t drop out, they died. They were sent on a fake mission and abandoned.>

Mass’s eyes widened. Instinctively, ze went to talk, but stopped zirself at the last second. The question never went past zir eyes.

<That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s something going on with AI and experiments on AI, too. I can prove all of it, just not here.>

“…okay, I see it,” ze said, jaw tight. “But what makes you think I can fix that?”

Connie sighed and, after glancing at the cameras in her periphery, risked something a little less… cryptic. “I sort of looked at your file—”

Mass scoffed. “Typical hacker.”

The absurdity of the familiar scorn in a moment like this startled a laugh out of Connie. Giving Mass a look, she continued, “—I can just stop talking entirely you know. Just leave you in the dark.”

“I'm _just_ saying,” Mass said. Connie bit back her smile. “Besides, it’s not like I didn’t already know that. You know I knew.”

“I know you know I know,” Connie said. Now Mass seemed to be biting back a laugh. “I walked in here the first day we met and used exactly the right pronouns for you without you introducing yourself. You called me on it.”

It was the start of their feud. Connie hadn’t mastered the art of separating what someone had told you to your face with what you’d found in their personnel files; Mass was used to having to introduce zir specific pronouns to people when they met. Mass instantly pegged her as the ‘hacker’ she was, and the rest was history.

Laughing about it was new.

“ _Anyway_ ,” she said, giving Mass a friendly elbow that surprised them both, “the point is… you have experience that I don’t. Experience that I need to solve this problem.”

“Nice of you to admit that,” Mass said, a genuine, if slightly smug, smile on zir face.

“Careful, it almost sounds like we’re getting along,” Connie said. Mass rolled zir eyes, but the smile didn’t fade. “Alright… this is going to be a lot of work to fix. We’re probably going to have to meet up out of session.”

“That’s fine by me. I’m not so busy these days. Most of the big work is falling on you up there in Alpha,” Mass said. “Name a day and time. I’ll probably be able to make it.”

“I’ll… let you know.” Connie erased the final words from the screen and reconnected her data-pad to the network. “It probably won’t be until after this upcoming assignment. It’s apparently a big deal.”

Mass nodded. “We’re due another jump, I know that. You can almost set a countdown to slipspace by how nervous Virginia is.”

“Poor Gin…” Connie shook her head. “I’ll find you and tell you when I know a time. For now, we’ll just… keep working in here.”

“Right,” Mass said. “Of course.”

The atmosphere in the Intelligence Centre felt different, when the conversation ended. Lighter.

They didn’t have a single argument for the rest of the session.

“ _Fucking_ dickshit cockass _bullshit!_ ”

“Let it out, South.”

Connie ducked out of the way of another wide swing, South’s own momentum carrying her another foot before she spun on her heel. Sloppy, compared to how she usually fought, but this wasn’t so much training as it was working out frustrations.

“Eighth, fucking _eighth!_ All I fucking did this time was fuck up a single fucking training session!” South said, yet another wide-swung punch narrowly missing Connie’s head. “ _One_ fuck up, not even in the fucking field, and I’m down _another_ fucking slot.”

South had overshot her window in a chamber scenario by a little under a minute. Automatic scenario failure. Not long ago, it would have meant little for her position; even had she been dropped down, she’d have climbed back up. These days, however, any reduction felt akin to a life sentence.

Fourth to eighth, in the space of a month? That was like getting a kick in the teeth for good measure.

“I fought so _fucking_ hard for that rank, I _earned_ it.” They fell back into stance, circling each other. “But he just won’t let me fucking _have it_. Fifth was one thing, but _this?_ ”

“He moved you to seventh so he could make a point with the others’ ranks,” Connie said, matter-of-factly, because that was what she needed. “It’s utter bullshit, you’re right.”

South huffed. “You’re the only one who fucking sees it.”

“Not the only one. Just the only one who’ll say something.”

“Same fuckin’ thing.”

Well, Connie couldn’t argue with that.

“Come on,” she said, beckoning South with a come-hither motion, “are you going to kick my ass or not? Don’t keep an enby waiting.”

Even with her helmet on, Connie could tell South was grinning. “You want me to kick your ass, huh? Thought it was the other way around.”

Connie shrugged. “It’s nice to switch it up every now and then.”

South rolled her neck, bouncing on her toes. “You’re full of surprises, mischief,” she said, and then she lunged.

Adequate motivation had South back on her game. Every swing had weight behind it that transferred right into the hit, momentum working in her favour instead of against her. Connie used all her usual tricks, ducking and dodging and moving faster than her opponent was capable of, but South knew her style like the back of her hand. So many months of training together had made their fights longer. Sometimes, however, it gave one of them the upper hand.

Connie didn’t hold back. When South backed her up to the training room’s wall, corralling her with targeted strikes that made her dodge exactly the way she wanted her to, it was all her.

It was Connie’s turn to grin behind her helmet.

“Hello there,” she said, looking up at her. A little breathless and more than a little energised, she wrapped her arms around South’s neck and pulled herself up, the wall at her back and her armoured legs around South’s waist, until their helmets touched.

“So much for switching it up,” South snickered, fingers finding the seals of Connie’s helmet. It clattered to the floor as she pulled off her own.

“I said it was nice, I didn’t say I was any good at it,” Connie said, before fitting her mouth to hers.

Arms hooked hastily under her thighs, South’s chest plate grating against hers, the kiss was anything but dignified. All the energy of a fight was packed into the collision of their lips, teeth catching at soft skin and tongues continuing the sparring match that lay abandoned in its wake. South was still angry, it was written into every inch of her, but Connie knew all the best ways to distract her from that anger.

Cupping South’s jaw in her hand, her thumb stroking over the curve of her cheekbone, she felt the contact soften in an instant. Slowly, margin by margin, the kiss became something gentler but all the more desperate. Warm skin against cool; fingertips brushing against freshly dyed hair; the arms under Connie’s legs shifting to hold her more securely.

Everything vanished, just for a little while, until those infernal bands began to beep.

“For fuck’s sake,” South muttered, their lips barely parted. She tried to ignore it, pressing back into the kiss with all of that dissipating rage refortified, but the bands _just kept beeping._

Connie and South pulled away at the same time. Connie hopped down from her hips, pulling up the alert on her band. Something about improper armour in the armoured training rooms; apparently, their helmets had been off too long.

“That is _ridiculous_ ,” Connie said, dismissing the alert to grab her helmet from the floor. South snatched hers up so sharply it left a line of purple paint on the floor.

“Can’t have a second’s fucking peace in this place,” South said. Throwing up her arms, helmet still grasped tightly in one hand, she directed her venom at the camera in the corner. “One fucking minute with a bucket off is enough to start blasting us with fucking alerts now? What the _shit_?! You monitoring our heart rates too, you intrusive freaks?! Figuring out if we’re getting a little bit too fucking excited?!”

“South—” Connie started, but didn’t have time to finish before the camera rotated on its mount to look right at them.

South’s helmet flew into the corner and the camera sparked and died.

The notification was instantaneous.

They didn’t even have to open the alerts. The leaderboard on the wall told them all that they needed to know.

South’s jaw muscles clenched and twitched. Her fists curled into tight balls, her arms shaking from the tension. Shoulders squared, she stalked over and snatched her helmet back from the floor. A small, spiderweb fracture radiated from the corner of her visor where it had hit the camera.

“I’m going to get this repaired,” she said, voice flat. “Before they demote me for that too.”

“Alright,” Connie said, gently. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

“‘Course. Sorry,” South said. Connie shook her head, offering her a hand as she walked past.

South took it and squeezed once, before disappearing out the door. Connie could still hear her band beeping down the hall until it automatically closed behind her.

Her own band kept going until her helmet was securely back on her head. Soon, it would start up again to tell her her slot was over.

Tongue flicking over her bottom lip, over the slight lingering indents of South’s teeth, she looked at the sparking, broken camera in the corner of the ceiling. No one actually watched those feeds every second of the day. The camera motion could have been a coincidence, but if she hadn’t believed in coincidences before, she certainly didn’t now.

Her gaze fell to South’s name, now sat at number nine on the board.

It was like they were looking for an excuse.

Sighing, Connie sat down against the wall and waited out the rest of the session. Every now and then she satisfied the band’s requirement for adequate movement by jerking an arm or a leg until it stopped beeping. Otherwise, she took the brief reprieve from training, work and lying for what it was: a rare opportunity.

She didn’t feel much like eating, when her lunch slot finally came around and she could leave. Only the knowledge that South would worry if she clearly hadn’t eaten when they next saw each other made her swing by the mess to grab a snack bar. It was mercifully quiet; Wash had yet to arrive from his own session and she didn’t interact with anyone except to give Mass a wave from across the room as she left.

What she needed to do was go and retrieve her PC, continue working. What she did instead was start to wander the halls, idly eating the bar she’d taken and letting her thoughts drift.

The training floor was still blocked off. The windows had been darkened, but if you squinted hard enough you could see the technicians working away, replacing the damaged modular pillars and making some new additions whilst they were at it. The carnage from the three versus one had provided a convenient opportunity for more than just board adjustments.

Curiously, Texas had yet to appear on the leaderboard. Slot number ten was vacant, not listed on any board on the ship. Even more curiously, Texas had yet to appear _anywhere._ Since the match, no one had seen Texas in the mess hall, the training rooms, the _locker_ room—the places any agent could be found multiple times a day, without fail.

She wasn’t in medical, either. At least, not in the public recovery wards.

All of that fanfare, all of that chaos, then _nothing._ She was riding out the aftermath in private. The question was whether that was under the Director’s orders, or if she was doing it of her own accord. Something told Connie it was probably the former. The whole thing had felt staged, until it all went wrong; why would the aftermath be anything but the same?

Connie sighed, shaking her head and moving on.

It wasn’t like she _wanted_ her every waking thought to be occupied by the Project’s secrets. The past couple of weeks, all of the lies and sneaking around, had been mentally draining.

She wanted to spend time with South, but every moment they tried to steal away was brief or interrupted. She wanted to make up for her argument with Wash with more than just words, but there was no time and she felt like she had to be careful about everything she said. She wanted to be able to enjoy the bad movies the squad watched, she wanted to be able to focus long enough to cheat at a poker game with an innocent smile, she wanted to _enjoy_ her downtime.

If you’d told the Connie of only a month ago that the only person that she’d be able to talk with openly soon was Massachusetts, of all people, she’d have laughed in your face. She’d probably have told you that them getting along was a sign of the end times. Yet somehow, that was the position she had found herself in.

It’d be funny, in a way, if she didn’t know that if she stayed on this path, things would only get worse.

She drifted until she came to a stop at the windows overlooking the training chamber, where the top half of Beta Squad was currently running their daily scenario. Crumpling the empty wrapper of her snack in her fist, she leaned against the wall and watched them navigate the portion of the chamber she could see.

The squad had once again nominated Nebraska as the ‘target’—something that he hated almost as much as everyone hated him. The sunshine twins, Hawaii and California, were better equipped than ever to infiltrate buildings since the introduction of the grav boots. Hawaii walked around above Nebraska’s head without making a single sound, no doubt using her helmet camera to relay back everything to her team.

On her hip sat an inconspicuous device that Connie knew well. When Louisiana teleported into the room at ceiling level and fell down directly atop Nebraska’s shoulders, Connie was less surprised than the enraged man she landed on.

One fake plunge of her sword later and Nebraska was forced to play dead on the floor. He hated that, too.

Monty and Virginia breached the room within seconds, Monty cheering all the while and high-fiving an equally enthused Louisiana. As California got to retrieving the ‘data’ needed, Virginia stood under the much taller Hawaii and held out her arms for her to drop into. She caught her without issue.

Something akin to jealously settled in Connie’s stomach, unwelcome.

The connections she’d made in Alpha meant everything. They were her team; they had been for months. But it was hard not to think back to a simpler time, before everything had come with such high stakes. Beta squad had been that time. When more missions ended with relief and laughter and everyone had the _time_ to sit together, to have stupid debates in the mess hall every other day. When their communal time wasn’t reduced to a couple of nights a week at best. When the board wasn’t hanging over their every _goddamn_ move. When she didn’t have to not-lie and _lie_ and—

Connie groaned, dropping her head against the glass.

This next mission, this mystery asset they were tracking… it was stressful to think about before, but with every new revelation it only got worse. It had to have something to do with the AI for the Director to be so dead set on finding it, but what _was_ it? What were they hunting? Who were these Innies, who had ODST gear and ships to spare and enough resources to hold down facilities in multiple systems _simultaneously?_

“I’m going to give myself a migraine,” she grumbled, heels of her palms against her eyes.

Montana and Louisiana were waving at her when she raised her head again. She barely managed a smile and a wave in return before she had to leave, before her final memories of the Triplets could transplant themselves into the scene.

Checking her band, she decided she had just enough time to swing by her room and check her no doubt empty messages from the network before she was due at the Intelligence Centre.

Setting up her equipment was becoming a routine she could complete with her eyes closed. Tucked into the corner of the room and her signal once again scrambled, she connected to the network with no expectations.

Only to find that, against all the odds, she had a _response._

Habit almost had her closing out before she processed what she was seeing. A single message in response to her enquiry, from someone whose pseudonym of choice was ‘Rodent of Unusual Size’. Running the necessary decryption software, she waited with bated breath for the contents to become readable.

ROUS//: <UNSC-affiliated asshole here! Cole protocol’s a big fucking deal you sure about that? not many people willing to fuck up that just for shits and giggles. not doubting you, just making sure before you start flinging shit like a pissed off monkey>

Well, this person certainly had a way with words.

Connie sat for a full minute debating on responding before deciding to do so. Getting another answer was unlikely and if this person could prove their affiliation, their intentions…

She composed a quick response, assuring ‘Rodent of Unusual Size’ that she had proof of the potential Cole Protocol violation and reminding them that she had asked for clarity. ‘Experiments run on sensitive equipment’ was how she phrased it, as close to the truth as she could get without immediately giving away too much. Finally, she asked for proof of their affiliation to the UNSC.

She was ready to wind down her PC when the almost alarmingly quick response came through.

ROUS//: _<_ sounds super shady, i buy it. proof is attached. i think if i wasn’t meant to be here they’d just shoot me instead of putting up with bullshit _>_

The message told her three things: one, this person either had access to superluminal communications like her, or they were in the Sol system; two, they were ridiculously chill for a UNSC affiliated hacker; three, that they definitely _were_ a UNSC affiliated hacker.

Wrapped up tight under UNSC encryption codes she found a picture of the inside of an active UNSC base, a single middle finger the centrepiece of the image. In the background were two, cleanly armoured marines with appropriate rank insignias and standard equipment, both flipping the bird right back.

The encryption code would have been enough for Connie to consider it reasonable proof, but on top of that the image scanned as unique when she checked it. Those two things combined were all she needed to let this go a little further.

Her band’s five-minute warning sounded as she sent her next response, accepting the proof and offering up a single piece of new information: she was reporting this from an ONI SpecOps program. Half a warning, half a not so subtle hint that this was dangerous for her.

The response that followed was just as surreal as the rest:

ROUS//: <then i guess we better be real fucking sneaky then>

Connie almost laughed. Whoever this was they were certainly a character.

The beeping was becoming repetitive by the time they’d organised a video link for later in the week. With a slipspace jump drawing near, time was of the essence. Connie had everything she needed to hide her location and to cut all contact with a single keystroke if needed.

In an ideal scenario, she’d have had much more, but this wasn’t an ideal scenario. She worked with what she had.

The door opened as her PC closed. A de-suited South stepped inside and stopped mid-drag of her towel across her hair, still wet from the shower.

“Hey, mischief,” she said, tossing the towel through the open door of the wet room, leaving her hair fluffed up and all over the place. Connie instantly felt the urge to run her fingers through it. “Can’t keep you away from work lately, can we?”

“Busy days,” Connie said, slipping the PC under her bed and standing. Holding her hands up as she approached, broadcasting her intentions, she gently squeezed South’s shoulders. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fucking pissed,” South mumbled, encircling Connie’s waist loosely. “Not at you, though. Never at you.”

“I know, you’re angry at the situation. You have every right to be,” Connie said, rubbing slowly up and down her upper arms.

“Fuck yeah I do.” Fingertips danced up the line of Connie’s spine. “I just— wanted to make sure you fuckin’ knew that, y’know? Fuck knows I get loud and lash out at shit, but I need you to know it’s not at you.”

“I _know_ , South. It’s okay.” Leaning up on her tiptoes, Connie pressed a gentle kiss to South’s lips. “I’ve never once been scared of you when you’re angry,” she said, smiling reassuringly. “I promise.”

South exhaled and nodded. “Thanks, mischief,” she said. She was about to continue talking when the minute ticked over and Connie’s band deemed her late for her session, the beeping going from frequent to incessant. “I swear to _fuck_ —”

Connie sighed, pecked her on the lips and reluctantly let her shoulders go. “Sorry, I’m running late. We’ll have a better evening, okay? We’ll settle down, pile up the blankets, watch a movie…”

“…fuck?”

“And fuck,” Connie said with a giggle, brushing her thumb over South’s lower lip. “I could do with feeling like I’m in control of something today.”

A tiny, almost imperceptible shiver ran down South’s spine. Connie grinned.

The band’s beeping went up another octave and they both rolled their eyes.

“I’ll see you later,” Connie said. “Try not to kill anyone when I’m gone.”

“Heh. I’ll try,” South said, tucking the long side of Connie’s hair behind her ear. Before she could step away, she stopped her. “Hey, mischief? This whole… CT thing…”

“Call me it around the others,” Connie said. “Or mischief. I like mischief. When we’re alone… call me whatever you like, Natasha.”

South gave her a lopsided smile. “Alright, mischief. Just had to ask.”

Connie smiled back, and then she left South standing there, watching her as she went.

The beeping was a beast nipping at her heels, spurring her forward in search of silence. Clamping her hand over her wrist did little to muffle the sound, which pierced her flesh just as easily as it pierced her ears. The bands were one of a pile of things that were red flags in hindsight, now flapping violently in the wind. Connie wanted nothing more than to tear them down.

She all but skidded across the boundary of the Intelligence Centre, looking up to a wide-eyed Mass who briefly looked as if ze had seen a ghost.

“You’re _late_ ,” ze said.

“I’ve been late a lot of times, Mass,” Connie said, exhaling in relief at the return of merciful silence. Mass’s eyes continued to follow her until she sat in her chair and even then, ze looked uneasy. “Come on, Mass, the band beeping at me was punishment enough.”

Mass huffed. Connie was half-way to thinking that their previous friendly interaction had meant nothing when ze rolled zir chair up beside her and showed her a typed message.

 _<_ You told me you were poking your nose where it shouldn’t be barely a couple of days ago and that the Project has apparently disposed of undesirables. Forgive me if I was a little bit concerned.>

Oh. That was not what she had expected at _all._

“Don’t do it again,” Mass said, pulling back zir data-pad. “We have work to do.”

“Sorry, I’ll message ahead next time,” Connie said. Her hand was on Mass’s shoulder before she even thought about it. Mass looked at it for a moment, then half-heartedly shrugged it away, glancing back at the camera in the corner.

Right. No coincidences.

Time stretched and contracted at will in the days leading up to the call with her new contact. One minute everything seemed to speed ahead, daily routines lost in a blur of motion; the next, everything dragged out until minutes felt like hours. Anticipation and nerves and the ever-present feeling that she was being watched made for an uncomfortable few days, where the things she wanted so badly to enjoy seemed almost entirely out of reach.

Her night with South had been like a pocket of untouched time, isolated from everything else. A brief few hours where for the first time in days, she felt like things were _normal_ , like she had some modicum of control over what was happening in her life. Like things weren’t going to change.

She told herself, as she lay there in the afterglow, that she could stop this at any time. That she could pretend she’d never seen the things she’d seen, go back to just asking ultimately fruitless questions and telling herself she was doing enough. That she could be _selfish_.

It was a lie. A comforting lie, enough to let herself enjoy the few moments she had there with South. Warm skin beneath deft fingers; lips against pulses; limbs tangled with limbs and soft voices gracing the air. Connie let that lie carry her through the night, that lie and the sound of South’s breathing.

Only three nights later and Connie slipped out of bed when she was sure South was sleeping.

The observation deck was as still and silent as it always was. Connie oriented herself and her equipment, taking extra precautions for something as risky as this. Access to the security feeds; the subtle redirection of the cameras in the room; double and triple checking her scrambling equipment… the signal would still be coming from the ship, but they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to her.

There was still more she wished she could do, more things she wished she could account for, but for now it would have to be enough.

The minutes before the call connected were the longest yet.

She’d thought, with so much time, she’d be prepared for whatever face greeted her on the other end of the feed, but nothing, _nothing_ could have prepared her for the sight of two familiar ODST helmets and insignias that filled the screen.

Two thoughts came at once: _oh god, I should have worn my helmet_ and _oh god, it’s the fucking Insurrectionists!_

She was milliseconds away from slamming the lid closed when the sharp sound of a fist hitting a table jolted her.

“ _I_ knew _it was you!_ ”

 _That_ was not reassuring to hear.

“ _Wait wait wait, don’t hang up!_ ” the Insurrectionist Leader—Needles, the little one had called him—said. Connie hesitated just long enough for him to pull off his helmet, revealing a face that rode the line between familiar and a stranger. “ _I know what this looks like on your end, but I promise, we’re legit. You saw what Rat sent you._ ”

“Rat—?” was her startled response. Then the penny dropped.

Rodent of Unusual Size. Rodent, rat. _Fuck._ How didn’t she see that before?

“ _Yeah hi, that’s me. Rat’s the name, don’t wear it out or I’ll wear it back in for you real quick,_ ” said the little— said _Rat_. They pulled off their helmet to reveal a black mask covering the lower half of their face, wild brown eyes set in a face just a shade darker than Connie’s own. The braid was as long as ever. “ _Needles here had a bet going on if you were who he says you were. Now I owe the fucker money. Thanks a lot for being you._ ”

“…you’re incomprehensible, you know that right?”

“ _It’s part of my charm._ ”

“ _You can give me that money and all the shit over it you like later, Rat. We don’t have the time to waste_ ,” Needles said. Rat rolled their eyes pointedly at him, but he ignored them. “ _Connie, we—_ ”

Connie’s hands flew to grab the top of the screen. “How do you know my name?”

“ _Way to go, Needles, you went right to giving her a fucking heart attack._ ”

“ _I know your name because I know you_ ,” Needles said. _“Or— I knew you, years ago. I was friends with your brother, Connie._ _I recognised your pseudonym; he told us about it, so we would know it was you if you ever appeared on our radar._ ”

Her heart began pounding in her chest. Someone from home? The familiarity of the man’s face made sense, if that was true, but then… who was he?

“You… know Keaton?” she said, examining his features, trying to place him. Dark hair shaved into a fauxhawk, skin paler than the majority of Resol’s population… if she tried, _really_ tried, she could remember a flash or two of a younger version of the man in front of her. Of him stood laughing with her brother and his friends. “Is he—is he _there?_ ”

Needles’ face fell and Connie’s hopes fell with it. “ _Uh… no. Keaton… he died._ ”

Two words, and it was like her pounding heart just _stopped._

“ _At least, we assume he did,_ ” Needles continued, avoiding looking at the camera. _“Last we heard, they… weren’t letting known Insurrectionists off the planet when it was glassed_.”

“I-Insurrectionists?!” Connie sputtered. Keaton wasn’t… Keaton had never been… “Keaton was an _Insurrectionist_?”

“ _We all were, back in the day!_ ” Rat said, much too brightly. “ _Some of us got a clue and dropped out earlier. Didn’t fancy getting fucked by both the UNSC and the Covenant at once, y’know? That’s not the kind of threesome anyone would enjoy._ ”

“ _Keaton wouldn’t leave when we did. He wanted to stay and keep fighting back home. Stay near you and your moth—_ ”

Connie raised a hand and Needles stopped talking.

“Stop. Just— stop. Give me a minute. And— and give me _proof,_ ” she snapped. Taking a deep breath, she did what she could to ground herself.

Needles sighed. “ _Send her our old criminal records, Rat._ ”

The files came through within the next five minutes. UNSC encryption. A collection of old documentation about a small faction of Insurrectionists on Resol—barely out of their teens, at the time. Ten of them in total.

Ten criminal records, nine of them marked expunged. Keaton Diaz’s name and picture were plastered at the top of the only active record, her brother’s face staring back at her aged by time and stress.

Gingerly, she reached out and touched the screen.

It was true. Really, she’d known it was the second they said it.

_“Something’s… wrong, Connie. With this planet.”_

_She’d found him sitting in the front room in the dark, a shadow on the sofa, backlit only by the faint light of the streetlamps outside the window. He’d heard the creak of that uneven stair under a misplaced foot, but he had said nothing as she crossed the room and clambered over the back of the sofa to sit above him, her legs swinging idly. Back and forth, back and forth, her heels impacting the cushions._

_He hadn’t spoken at all until she’d asked him why he was up so late, in the hushed voice of a teenager who didn’t dare wake her tired, overworked parents who had been asleep above them._

_“What do you mean?” she’d asked, with a tilted head and the innocence she’d once held. (Who was she kidding? What child, raised in the midst of galactic war, ever held true innocence?)_

_Keaton had sighed, breathing deeply into his hands. “The UNSC is pulling out more soldiers this month. The recruiters are scouting the schools. There’re_ kids _signing up to take the place of those they’re taking from the local garrison—saw a boy, couldn’t be more than 15, at the tent today. Lied about his age. They didn’t even question it.”_

_Connie didn’t know what to say to that. Her fingernails caught at the lines that crossed her palm._

_“They can’t keep doing this. We_ can’t _keep letting them do this.”_

_“But what do you think anyone can do?” she’d said, watching the way Keaton buried his face deeper into his cupped hands. “Keaton. Come on. The war—”_

_“—I know, I know, the war is more important. But I can’t— I can’t ignore that, Connie. I can’t.”_

_She had huffed, with an almost childish indignance, “I didn’t say to ignore it. I’m not ignoring it! But there’s nothing we can_ do _. We have to focus on our community, our_ family _.”_

_“Yeah, yeah, I know.” He’d sounded more exhausted with every word. “I know. You… you do good work, exposing the fuckers around here—”_

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she’d said, finally provoking a little smirk. They hadn’t caught her yet, but he knew. He had always known._

_“—but there’s bigger things going on. I… I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s late. You should be going to bed. You still have school tomorrow,” he said, ruffling her hair—shaved into a mohawk, the start of her experiments in aesthetic and presentation. “Go on. Sleep.”_

_A year later, her brother left home and never came back._

She supposed she knew where he went, now.

“Give me a minute,” she repeated, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Deep, even breaths. _Don’t lose it. You knew he had to be dead, Connie. Don’t lose it._

Silence fell over the deck.

She could have shut the lid; she could have pretended that this had never happened. Packed up her work and returned to her room, climbed back into bed with her girlfriend and pretended that she could live with what the Project was doing if it didn’t mean having to face up to things she didn’t want to face.

She could have, but she didn’t. She measured her breathing until she no longer felt like she was going to collapse in on herself and then she spoke again.

“Alright. So you are who you say you are,” she said. “Can you actually _help_ me?”

“ _Yes, we can. We’re—_ ” Needles started, only to stop when Connie held up her hand again. “ _Yes?_ ”

“One thing at a time. We’ve been fighting you for months. According to Command, you’re Insurrectionists, _currently_. That’s clearly not true,” she said, tugging at the drawstring of her sweats. “It makes sense that you’re UNSC. Even defectors wouldn’t have the kind of gear you have. What _doesn’t_ make sense is why you were _acting_ like Innies.”

“ _The Luminous system is a steaming hot mess of shit, that’s why. It was safer to pretend to be Innies than to draw attention by being openly UNSC assholes,_ ” Rat said. “ _Since we used to be Innies, it was like stealing candy from an ugly baby. Everyone in your program seemed to buy it._ ”

“Except me.”

“ _Except you_ ,” Needles said, some inscrutable smile on his face. “ _Look, the short story is we were enlisted to work for an important guy at the UNSC, he’s developing a lot of technology for the war effort. Everything was going fine there until you Freelancer people showed up. Since then we’ve spent more time warding you off than doing our work._ ”

“ _That kind of_ is _our work, asshole._ ”

“ _You know what I mean, Rat._ ”

“I knew something was fishy, but…” Connie sighed, teeth worrying her bottom lip. “This is… a lot, to take in, all in one night.” An understatement, if she’d ever made one. Her brother an Insurrectionist and dead; everything she’d suspected about the ‘Innies’ confirmed true and more; the realisation that she was really doing this _again_.

At least, she supposed, this time the UNSC was her ally, not her enemy.

“ _I’m sorry, I know it’s probably very confusing,_ ” Needles said. “ _We’ve had our suspicions about Project Freelancer’s activity for a while; well, ever since you started targeting us directly. The Cole Protocol thing, however… that’s news to us._ ”

“It’s news to me too. It’s been barely a couple of weeks since I started realising what was going on here. Less than that, when just talking about the damn Cole Protocol,” Connie said. Her fingernails had begun to tug at the scar tissue across her hand, again. “I don’t have much, the Director’s been cleaning up after himself, but I can get more. What I need is a contact, a… handler?” she said, the word feeling awkward on her tongue. “I don’t know.”

“ _You need support,_ ” Needles said.

Exhaling, Connie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I do.”

“ _Then that’s what we’ll be. We can act as a contact. We can take the data you acquire and store a copy somewhere safe. Rat can provide you with additional tools_ ,” Needles spoke clearly, directly. It broke through some of the lingering haze. “ _We can set up a plan. Dates for check-ins._ ”

“Right,” Connie said. “That sounds good.”

Back on Resol, with _Lockson_ , she’d worked almost entirely alone. The network provided scattered assistance here and there, but nothing substantial, nothing _formal._ Nothing like this.

Handler. Contact. _Check-ins._

Her head was spinning. The catch of her fingernails on the ridge of her scar was the only thing sharp enough to reorient her.

“Let me tell you what I have, first. Then we can work out the details,” she said. Needles nodded, waving a hand to tell her to go ahead. “The Project has been… disposing of agents. That was the first thing I found, but I know that’s not enough these days, so I kept digging and found that apparently, the Project is meant to be testing AI-soldier combat teams. Only… we’ve never been told that. There’s never been any mention of AI.”

“ _Well that’s shady as shit_ ,” Rat said. “ _And this isn't the result of ONI sticking their dick in this_ how _? Like c'mon, they're all over the ‘we'll tell you jack shit and if you don't deepthroat our boot we'll shove a gun up your ass’ shtick._ ”

Connie’s brow furrowed, but she shook her head and carried on. “We _are_ an ONI SpecOps project, so I can’t say I’m… entirely surprised. I knew there would be secrets, just not… secrets like this. The Cole Protocol violation comes in with these documents.”

Compiling what she had, she encrypted them and sent them across. Rat had them open within a few minutes of their arrival.

“Apparently, we were only going to have one AI. At some point, that changed; around the same time, the Director spoke about experiments on the AI in a personal log,” Connie said. Rat nodded along, their eyes scanning rapidly over the files in front of them. “That… sounds like a Cole Protocol violation to me.”

“ _Sure fuckin’ does. You’re right to call this shit in. That’s real dangerous. AIs are bundles of sensitive information, running experiments on something like that is like getting drunk and spewing war secrets to the enemy whilst giving them a blowy for good measure._ ”

“…do you get used to that?” Connie said, directed at Needles.

“ _Sort of_ ,” Needles said, looking ready to laugh.

Connie bit back a faint smile. “ _Anyway_ , that’s… what I have so far. I have an ally on board, with experience with AI, but I haven’t had chance to talk to zir in depth yet. As you can imagine, finding safe places to talk isn’t easy here. They monitor our every move.”

“ _Where are you now?_ ”

“Observation Deck. No one ever comes down here this late and I was able to create a blind spot. My signal is scrambled.”

“ _But still a visible transmission_ ,” Rat said, not a question but a conclusion. Connie nodded. “ _We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Anything else to account for?_ ”

Connie raised her arm and gestured at the band wrapped around her wrist. “Monitors our vitals, tracks our location… I spend enough time down here in the evenings with a couple of friends that I figure me appearing on the system as being down here won’t raise suspicion. So long as my signal stays scrambled, I’m fine.”

“ _I’m going to look into that too. Never too safe with with boot-deepthroaters._ ”

“Are you sure you’re not still an Innie?” Connie raised a brow.

Rat’s mouth was hidden behind their mask, but Connie could see the glint in their eye. “ _Ask me again when the war’s over._ ”

“ _When’s the next best time we can organise a check-in for?_ ” Needles said, eyeing something on Rat’s screen.

“Probably after this next mission. Standard space time, that’s probably… a… little over a…?” Connie said, trailing off as Needles’ face twisted. “What? _Oh_. Right, that… operation is against you guys.”

“ _If you mean the February 12 th asset transfer, yes. It is_,” Needles said. “ _I’ll order my team not to fire on you. Does two days after that work?_ ”

“Make it three. Post-mission things can get pretty hectic. Sometimes we don’t even have debriefing until everyone from the mission is stable enough to be in the room.”

“ _Alright, three days after it is_ ,” Needles said, standing back. “ _Hopefully—and don’t take this the wrong way—you’ll have failed your objective._ ”

“We can but hope,” Connie said, a pang of guilt in her chest. Failure could mean consequences for a lot of people. Those consequences didn’t go away just because the Director didn’t get what he wanted. “I’ll… set up an initial transfer of the data I have. Other than that, I don’t see anything else I can do here tonight. I have a lot to think about.”

“ _Of course,_ ” Needles said, his features… sympathetic? Sad? “ _I’m sorry you had to find out about Keaton like that._ ”

“I’d assumed he was dead ever since I heard about Resol,” Connie said, even though she could feel the shadowy tendrils of grief wrapping back around her chest. “Even before I left, I hadn’t seen him in years. I was still a teenager when he disappeared. He wasn’t even around when I came out as non-binary, the last he knew I was his sister. It’s…”

It’s okay? It’s in the past? It’s something she could handle?

Was any of that true?

“I’ll set up that transfer,” she said, instead. “Thank you. For helping me and for confirming things for me. I need to sleep, but I’ll be in contact.”

“ _Of course_ ,” Needles said again. “ _But before you go—I’m sorry about the injury, from before. If I’d have known it was you…_ ”

“It’s fine,” Connie said. “Really. I lived.”

“ _Alright. Well, we’ll let you go. Be safe, Connie._ ”

She hung up without another word.

World starting to close in around her, she held it together just long enough to initiate the transfer but broke down sobbing the _second_ it finished.

How long she sat there, curled into a ball and rocking, she didn’t quite know. It couldn’t have been long. When she fought her way through the haze of a meltdown to collect her PC and trail back to her bunk, it was still dark.

She muffled her sobs for as long as she could, but it wasn’t long enough. Knelt beside her bed, the shrike clutched tightly in her hands, she fell apart with her face buried in the sheets.

Within seconds there was movement behind her, the shifting of fabric and feet hitting the floor. A yawn.

“Connie?” South mumbled, the name alone enough to set off a fresh wave of sobs. “Shit, what’s wrong?”

Could she tell her? Could she even find the air to speak, let alone the will to tell another lie?

South’s hands found her shoulders, gentle but firm, reassuring. Connie pulled herself away from her bed and turned into her arms, pressed her face into her chest and let her tears soak her bare skin.

“Shhh, I got you…” Her lips pressed against Connie’s head, one hand cupped around the base of her skull. It should have _hurt_ , the contact in the midst of a meltdown usually _hurt_ , but not this time. This time it was like coming up for air. “What happened, Connie…?”

“M-My brother’s— my brother’s dead. I-I knew this, I knew this, but I found— I found confirmation.” It wasn’t a lie. Another not-lie. Another one for the pile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you…”

“Don’t be fuckin’ sorry for being upset because your fucking _brother_ died for fuck’s sake,” South said softly, fingers combing through Connie’s hair. “I can’t even imagine if… well, y’know.”

“I— I knew. I _knew._ ”

“C’mon,” South said as she hooked an arm under Connie’s thighs and stood up. “Into bed we go. C’mon.”

Connie clung on like her life depended on it. It almost felt like it did.

South settled them back in the too-small bed on her side of the room, pulled the blankets overtop them, and cradled her close to her chest. She lay there and let Connie sob, until there were no more tears to shed, until they were both exhausted, until Connie fell so quiet and still that South assumed she was asleep and followed suit.

With the last shreds of consciousness she had, Connie cupped South’s cheek and wished, with all her heart, that she didn’t have to lie.

The meltdown passed, as all things did. She pulled herself together in the morning. She got up early to go to breakfast with South just to be close to her. She went to her scheduled sessions like she hadn’t just found out she was the final member of her family alive in the universe. She did everything she was supposed to do.

There were bigger things than personal tragedies. That was what she told herself, anyway.

It was a few days before her and Mass’s IC sessions lined up again. Last minute, the day before the _Invention_ entered slipspace once again and cut Alpha off from the rest of the crew. It would be invaluable time to work, without the watching eye of command on her every move, but she found herself wishing Mass would be there.

Ze wouldn’t be. Ze would be asleep in a cryotube in Beta Bay, dead to the world.

Ze wouldn’t be able to help her, but that didn’t mean she had to keep zir out of the loop. She entered the Intelligence Centre that day with a pre-typed message on her data-pad, set down on the screens in front of them with their chairs huddled together.

<I have a contact. I was right, the Insurrectionists aren’t who Command say they are. This keeps getting deeper and deeper.>

Mass’s eyes widened, but ze kept zir composure. Clearing zir throat, ze sat back and rolled zir eyes for the sake of the camera. “Of _course_ you’ve think you’ve got it all figured out. You always do.”

There was none of the old venom. It was a performance, convincing enough for an outsider but not enough for Connie, who struggled not to break into a smile.

She let herself have that smile, when her head was buried back in her work.

In hindsight, maybe that was what jinxed it.


	11. Tailspin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art]() by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

The view from the _Invention’s_ bow was centred on a small, inner colony world, its sky swirling with clouds. Volute, a colony with minimal history of Insurrectionist activity and a thriving urban population, still receiving support from the UNSC. It made little sense for a key rebel target to be out there, but noticing that required knowing more information about the planet than Command had provided.

Connie leaned against the holographic table at the rear of the bridge, arms folded on the edge. Agents filtered in one at a time; no one late, but everyone a different degree of early. Carolina had arrived before Connie and was familiarising herself with the intel and the holographic display. Florida had been there perhaps even before Carolina, hovering in the corner of the room, silent.

Connie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him in a briefing.

It felt oddly quiet, without the incessant chatter of York talking the ear off whoever would listen. Or without South, who always had something to say to fill the space in the air carved by an uncomfortable silence.

She wasn’t on the roster. The assignment had come through to both of them, but the Director had only rated agents ranked one through eight for the mission.

South had held her anger better than anyone ever liked to give her credit for, when she read that.

Washington had found his place at Connie’s side. Despite all recent tension and disagreements, he still liked to hover close by, and Connie had no intention of discouraging it. A friendly elbow in the ribcage startled a choked laugh out of him and he retaliated in kind, unarmoured funny bone caught on the edge of her helmet at just the right angle to make him jump. Connie failed to muffle her laughter, tilting her head at him as if to say, ‘what did you think was going to happen?’.

“I was aiming for your shoulder,” he said, leaving himself entirely open for a retaliatory:

“I hope your aim is better on the mission today then, Wash,” from Connie, a smirk in her voice. Wash huffed.

“It’s not my fault you’re so small.”

Ridiculous and familiar, it was almost enough to make Connie forget the reality of the situation. Almost.

The Director stood at the end of the bridge, another artificial silhouette cut by the dark tones of his clothes and his hair, his almost unnatural stance. He was backlit by a faint blue light and Connie squinted towards it, as best as she could without drawing attention to herself. The light was moving, shifting; it fluctuated in a way that almost mimicked the natural rhythm and cadence of a voice.

If she listened closely, boosting the audio suite in her helmet, she could catch the faint sound of the Director talking not to himself, as she’d assumed in the past, but _with_ someone, a second voice in the quiet. Only, there was no one else there. The Counselor was standing at the head of the table, keeping a watchful eye on the agents waiting, and even if he hadn’t been, from where she stood Connie would have seen any other person.

There was only the light, its fluctuations lining up perfectly with the indistinct answers to the Director’s questions.

It had to be the AI.

The Director was often seen standing at the head of the bridge; Connie had assumed he was either interfacing with F.I.L.S.S. or running through data before briefings, but if he’d been interfacing with this elusive AI then… it didn’t so much as answer existing questions, but it was an answer of a kind, regardless.

The Counselor coughed.

Connie forced her eyes back to the hologram, and the white figures of Wyoming and Maine on the other side of the table.

The last of the agents had arrived and Carolina broke away to collect the Director.

“Agents!” he said, and everyone’s backs snapped ramrod straight. “Your mission today is by far the most important you have undertaken to date.”

When Connie glanced back towards the terminal, the light was gone.

“As our number one,” the Director continued, nodding towards Carolina who had circled around to the other end of the table, “Carolina will be leading from the field.”

“Okay, here’s what we have,” Carolina said, inputting a code into the projector. “As you may have heard, there is suspected Insurrection activity in this area. Our intel says that members of the UNSC loyal to the Insurrection have acquired a high-level asset and are holding it in this secure location. It’s a hundred-and-ten-story building in the middle of an urban environment.”

The holographic display changed, wire skeleton buildings growing from the table; in the middle sat a tower, at least four times the height of any other on the map.

Connie shifted in place.

Project Freelancer was moving against a UNSC target in the middle of a civilian environment. Spiral, the city in which the facility resided, was not a city like many of those in Luminous-VI that had become war zones as a result of Insurrection, gang and mercenary activity. The information Rat had given her told the opposite story: it was a city thriving from war industries, factories on the outskirts pumping out military equipment by the shipload and keeping the local economy afloat.

Whatever the asset was—something even Rat didn’t seem to know, or wasn’t yet willing to share—the Director wanted it so desperately he was willing to risk drawing attention towards the Project in a way no previous mission had.

“What does security look like?” Wyoming asked.

“They have enough troops to fill a hundred-and-ten-story building,” Carolina said, cocking her head at him.

“So, that’s a lot of security.”

“We’re up to it,” Carolina said, hitting another button. A thick red line wound its way up the frame of the building, making a complicated but safe route from the ground floor to the target location that Connie remembered providing the initial intel for. “Our job is to infiltrate the building, work our way up to the floor where the Sarcophagus is being held, and secure it.”

 _The Sarcophagus?_ Connie thought, at the same time as North uttered the question aloud. Since when did the asset have a name?

“That is what we are calling the primary objective,” the Director said, drawing all eyes to him.

“But since this is a high-level asset,” Carolina continued, unperturbed by the interruption, “we need to access a key code to open the Sarcophagus.”

“I’m guessing they don’t keep that just taped to the side,” Wash said. Maine huffed a faint laugh under their breath.

“It’s held by an official of the program, who will be moving in a vehicle along the freeway between inspections,” Carolina said. The freeway unfolded across the table, tiny holographic cars populating the road until one highlighted red with a projection of this ‘official’s head above it appeared. “That’s when we hit the facility. We need to acquire both targets within minutes of each other. If we fail that, the remaining target will enter lockdown and we miss our window.”

That, at least, Connie knew. Her work on the files associated with the mission had given her the basic rundown of what was known about the asset. Rat had confirmed much of it for her, allowing her to plan ahead for how best to navigate the upcoming job so as to minimise their chances of success, without causing any unnecessary casualties.

“We will _not_ have another chance at this,” the Director said.

“So that means two teams,” Wash concluded.

With York still in medical, the infiltration team would need a way in. Logically, that role would fall upon Connie’s shoulders, likely backed up by Washington and either Carolina or North. Usually, she would have assumed South would take point on the other end, going after the codes; South backed by Maine or Carolina would have made a formidable ambush team. However, with South out of the equation and no sign of Agent Texas on the public roster, it was unclear what the makeup for such a team would be in practice.

If all went well, Connie had planned to delay the infiltration team until the window had passed with simple mistakes and lies.

But you know what they say about the best-laid plans.

“Two teams,” Carolina said with a nod. “Team A will consist of me, Wash, and Maine.”

Connie perked up. Wait, _what?_

“We will work infiltration on the package’s storage facility. York is still in the infirmary, so Wash, you will have to pull lockpicking duty.”

He _would?_

Wash’s double-take betrayed that he was just as surprised as Connie was. “Um… okay? Guess I’ll re-read my field manual in the transport.”

Before Connie had even had the chance to consider protesting, the bridge’s main entrance opened with a soft hiss and York waltzed in like he _wasn’t_ supposed to be laid up in a bed on the other end of the ship.

“Hey, don’t be so quick to give away my job,” he said, with the customary cocky little lilt to his voice.

All eyes turned to him. Anyone else might have shied away, but he stepped forward as casually as he had entered. Though something seemed more considered about the way he moved, compared to before the incident. Every motion a second slower than it used to be.

“York?” Wash said.

“I thought you were in the hospital,” Carolina said, meeting him half-way. Their gazes levelled.

“According to their records, I am,” York said.

“How’s your eye?”

“It’s okay,” York shrugged, walking past her. She stepped aside. “Docs will let me out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, huh?” Wash said, folding his arms.

York’s hands stopped an inch short of touching the table when he went to lean against it, but he corrected himself quickly. “Look, I couldn't let you guys have all the fun without me. Besides, you need someone to get you in.”

Connie looked at the Director, out of the corner of her eye. York was fresh out of medical, against doctors’ orders, and barely adjusting to his new disability. There should have been training regimens and assessments before he was welcomed back into the field.

The Director said nothing. Once again, Wash somehow became the voice of reason.

“Listen, I’m happy to see him too, but, this mission…” he said, trailing off. “I don’t know—”

“Hey,” Carolina said, firmly, “if York says he’s good, then he’s good.”

Hesitance in his voice, Wash said, “It’s your call, boss,” and fell back into line, but he glanced at Connie. She could only offer him a shrug as Carolina and York had a not-so-hushed and yet private-seeming conversation.

“It’s settled then,” the Director said. “York will join Team A and get them in the facility.”

“Thank you, sir,” York said.

Connie bit her tongue. _Fuck._

This wasn’t how it was supposed to work at _all_.

“Team B will be North, Wyoming and CT. You will act as recon for Team A and once we enter the building, you will disengage to attack the target on the freeway,” Carolina said. “North will lead Team B.”

“Got it,” North said.

Fists curled against the table, Connie released her tongue. If this wasn’t going to go as planned, then at the very least she could stir the pot with some questions. No longer expecting honest answers and with the knowledge that the board was utterly arbitrary, she had little to lose.

“What about Agent South?” she asked, as if she didn’t know, her head cocked.

The Director’s eyes narrowed. “Agent South will not be accompanying you on this mission.”

“Hmm. I guess the world’s a tough place when you move down a rank,” Connie said, for once revelling in the way the very air seemed to bristle. Rarely had she been so bold as to question the Director in front of everyone. Washington was used to it, but the uneasy shuffling and the heavy stares that came from the rest of the room brought a smirk to her face. “And where’s our new recruit? Will she be joining us?”

“That’s enough questions, Connecticut,” the Director snapped.

Connie turned to Wash, but eyed everyone, as she switched to SQUADOM. “Notice he didn’t say no.”

“Team B should be simple,” Carolina said, irritation layered over every word. “Stop the vehicle and grab the case. Team A, you have more of a challenge. Mainly, the Sarcophagus is an unknown.”

“How unknown are we talking?” Wash said.

“Unknown in that we don’t know its size, or its weight, or its dimensions. We just know it will have these markings somewhere on the exterior.”

The schematic of the city was replaced by a red hologram of an emblem, a triplicate based design with three alien looking symbols in each of the three corners.

“I saw those same markings on the oil platform,” North said.

“Correct. That facility created the primary objective,” the Director said. That was a lie. Whatever was in that package, it was nothing that had been created by some _cryogenics_ facility.

“Do we know what’s inside it?” Wash said.

“Yes, we know.”

Connie frowned. “How do we know what’s in it, but not know how big it is?” she said, only for the Director to glare at her silently. “Sorry, sir,” she apologised, rolling her eyes.

“We have a job to do, people. Let’s do it right and come home safe,” Carolina said, her commander voice in full force.

“That is all,” the Director said. “You are dismissed.”

Everyone stood to attention and a chorus of, “Yes sir!” filled the room.

Connie fell from attention first but left the room last, casting a final look towards the head of the bridge where the Director returned to, the blue light reigniting and casting him back into shadow.

“You okay, CT?” North asked, hovering in the doorway.

Connie pulled her gaze away and nodded, following after him without another word.

The bay of Team B’s Pelican was quiet with unease.

The door to the cockpit was closed. Alaska had been assigned as their pilot and he had always been a more anxious flyer than Niner; he had strict rules about no banter, no distractions, no anything. He was there to get them in and get them out, nothing else.

No one in Team B sought to challenge that. Wyoming had sat himself in the first seat in the bay and not said a word since, focused on checking and calibrating his sniper rifle. Only North’s voice broke the silence, muffled through his helmet as he communicated on LEADCOM with Carolina.

Connie had checked her pistol three times.

South had watched them, as they left. She’d been there waiting when they came down from the bridge, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed under her chestplate. Too far away for Connie to even offer a hand on her shoulder, but not too far away for her to feel the resentment coming off her in waves, aimed at no one and everyone at once.

Helpless to do anything, Connie could only look back at her as they boarded the ship. South had gone before they even crossed the threshold.

Connie sighed and checked her ammo pouch for the second time.

The bay fell silent and a few seconds later, North sat in the seat beside Connie.

“Is she okay, do you think?” he said. Connie cocked her head. “South. Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘okay’,” Connie said. Not looking at North, she continued, “She’s angry. Understandably so. All due respect, North, but of the two of you, she was more suited for this assignment.”

“The Director has his reasons, I’m sure,” North said, almost like he was _admonishing_ her for the answer.

“If this assignment is so important to him, you think he’d want the best team for the job.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his reasons. South may not like them, but she’ll get over it. You know she will.”

Connie pointedly didn’t respond. North sighed.

“CT, I’m no happier about it than you are, but there’s nothing to be done. She’s ninth on the board.”

Connie tilted her head towards him and gave him a long, hard stare through the golden eyes of her visor.

The intercom came to life. “Five minutes out,” Alaska said, before cutting off again.

North kept looking at Connie and she kept staring back. After a wasted thirty seconds, he sighed again and stepped up to the front of the bay to look out of the cut-out in the door.

“I _am_ glad you’re with us, CT,” he said, on his way. “You can do this.”

Connie frowned. Now what did he—?

Oh. Right. Her rant at Washington. He must have said something.

“Guess we’ll find out,” she said.

North cocked his head in what she could only assume was meant to convey a smile and turned to look outside.

Shaking her head, Connie turned her attention back to her weapons—then did a double take, when she realised Wyoming was looking at her. Only, when she looked again, his head was down and he was focusing on his rifle.

Connie frowned. Maybe she’d imagined it.

“Alright, gear up,” North said, grabbing his own rifle from where it was leaning against the wall. “LZ is the top layer of a parking structure. Gamma placed a vehicle for our retrieval. From there, I’ll watch for Team A’s window from a vantage point on the roof. We wait on their signal, then we go after our target.”

Sabotaging this side of the job without drawing attention would be more difficult. There was a large margin for error, places she could poke and prod and cause them to fail, but none that didn’t put people at risk and very few that wouldn’t out her intentions.

Her active role was minimal. She was there to monitor the tracker for Rhee Seibel’s vehicle, to make sure they didn’t miss their window. Mistiming it would be simple, if not for the fact the tracker was on all of the HUDs; whilst North would be driving and Wyoming would be preparing a shot, they would still be able to see if she obscured their opportunity.

Legitimate failure aside, the Director was going to get exactly what he wanted.

 _Goddammit_.

Five minutes had passed. Alaska swooped low and the three agents jumped from the rear of the Pelican, landing in a tight group on the top layer of the parking structure. Immediately, North ordered Connie and Wyoming to find the car whilst he took position as a scout for Team A.

The Warthog stood out like a sore thumb amongst the brightly coloured, mostly self-driving civilian cars. After verifying that the vehicle was, in fact, the one planted in advance by Gamma Squad, Connie balanced herself on the edge of the driver’s seat to program the tracker. Wyoming clambered into the passenger seat, balancing himself on the back and propping his sniper rifle on the roll cage.

Her back was to him. Hanging off the cage by one hand, her legs still outside the vehicle, she typed the code in with the other. The uncomfortable weight of being watched pressed at the base of her skull, but when she turned her head, Wyoming was looking down his rifle’s sight.

Frowning, she shook off the feeling and finished up. Hopping down from the driver’s side, she pulled herself up into the turret, instead, adjusting it for her height.

One wrong move and more than the mission would suffer for it. If she did nothing, the Director got what he wanted and she failed her new allies; if she acted, the watching eyes of those still unblinkingly loyal to the Project would turn on her and it’d all be over before it had truly begun.

Connie took deep, even breaths. The pressure was suffocating.

North sat on the far edge of the roof, his own rifle aimed squarely towards the base of the target building. Team A had dropped and SQUADCOM was active; North acted as Team A’s eye in the sky, giving them the window that they needed to get inside the building by monitoring guard movements, camera movements and the like.

“ _Hey, CT, do me a favour? Can you root me that software for overriding biometric locks? New helmet hasn’t had its suite updated yet_ ,” York asked, a few minutes in.

Connie forced herself not to roll her eyes. It was understandable that York wanted to be back in the field, doing his bit, she couldn’t fault him that—but he just wasn’t equipped, not this soon. If the Director wanted this done right, he should have assigned her to Team A—the fact she intended to do it very _wrong_ aside.

“Give me thirty seconds. You only have it for as long as I’m in range, York.”

“ _That’s as long as I need it for._ ”

A minute later, Team A was in.

“Alright, Team A,” North said, “you look clear. Window is open. Start your clocks. On my mark… _mark_.”

“ _Sync. Roger that. Team A is moving,_ ” Carolina said.

North held position for another ten seconds before joining CT and Wyoming at the hog, pulling himself into the driver’s seat and the car out of the lot.

“Alright Bravo, we have three minutes until the tango comes by. We’re going to trail him and on Carolina’s signal, we engage,” he said. He pulled the hog up by the side of the road. “Got an eye on the tracker, CT?”

“Of course,” Connie said. Rhee Seibel _was_ three minutes out, give or take a few seconds. “Pull into traffic on my mark.”

Two minutes.

One minute.

“Mark.”

The target vehicle zipped past and North pulled in three cars back. It resembled a civilianised Warthog, open-top with a roll-cage and thick plating, but with all the trappings of colonial road rules and civilian comforts. Music loud enough to travel back to them blared from the speakers.

Lax security measures, all things considered. Rat and Needles’ new intel must not have made it far.

Another three minutes later Carolina sent a simple message:

CL//: <We’re at the vault. Alarm activated. Move.>

Connie held her breath.

“You heard the boss,” North said, overtaking the next two cars ahead. One car left between them and Seibel.

Wyoming lined up his shot. The plan was to take out a tyre, not Seibel himself; his car would swerve, he’d pull over, they’d ambush and take the package. Wyoming was a crack shot; even in a moving car it should have been easy for him to make the mark.

He squeezed the trigger, the shot rang out—

And the car directly in front of them—the wrong one—lost control _._

It swerved wildly. Rear tyre shredding itself to ribbons on the road, the car _lurched_ sideways into the adjacent lane, slammed into the side of the next car over, sending that car into the next, into the next, into the—

Adrenaline pumping, Connie clung to the turret with all her strength, mag lock forgotten in the panic. She barely avoided being thrown loose when North jerked the steering wheel and narrowly pulled them out of the way of a spinning car that grazed the hog’s side, a streak of paint and a horrible screeching noise left in its wake. Another and another and _another_ , cars rolling and others frantically trying to pull away to prevent a pileup, but for every car that escaped into the median another lost control.

North had to shout to be heard on the radio. “Hold on tight, I’m going to—!”

The sentence ended with a violent grunt and Connie was suddenly hanging from the turret, the hog swerving so hard to try and dodge yet another car that it rolled onto two wheels, overbalanced and _flipped,_ toppled end over end over—

Her head hit the ground and the world went black.

Sirens. The first thing she heard was sirens.

Weight enough to crush her pressed down upon her chest, every draw and release of breath strained and weak. Ringing in her ears pierced the sirens, her head pounding with waves of agony and the smell of iron invading her senses. Her eyes opened to blaring warnings she couldn’t decipher, vision blurred and unsettled.

Nerves alight and awash with adrenaline, her first instinct was to _move_. She kicked out and her feet collided with solid metal—she was trapped, but the important thing was that her legs responded. Her arms, pinned by the weight of the vehicle atop her, couldn’t move, but her fingers could. Wiggling them one by one, she exhaled in relief, only to flinch at the pain _that_ brought.

Not paralyzed. That was a start.

Head and ears still ringing, she stared at the bright red alerts on her HUD until her eyes came into focus. The warnings stacked; her BIOCOM was flooded with colour by markers. Head trauma. Unsustainable pressure against her chestplate. Broken ribs. Blunt force trauma to every other part of her body, just not enough to break anything.

The armour did its job.

Only seconds might have passed since she regained consciousness. The sound of sirens got closer and closer, drowning out the not-so-distant muffled cries of the injured.

Creaking metal, however, was too loud to ignore; the Warthog pinning her to the ground was damaged. God only knew how long it would hold up before a fuel line snapped, or whatever was preventing it from crushing her with its full weight gave in. All attempts to wriggle free even a single limb made it shift dangerously.

She couldn’t even turn her head. So, when the white figure appeared above her, it was the first chance she’d had to realise Wyoming wasn’t trapped. He looked from side to side, surveying the scene, before his eyes settled on her.

“Wy— Wyoming,” she choked out. “Thank god, can you—”

The next thing she saw was the barrel of a pistol.

Connie’s eyes widened. “Wy—Wyoming…?”

His finger curled against the trigger, and then the bullet hit the metal above her as Wyoming crumpled like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

The pistol landed beside her head. Connie remembered to breathe.

What the fuck was—

Was he—

North appeared a second later. “Get ready to move, CT.”

He braced his shoulder against the Warthog and _pushed_ , adrenaline and force amps and determination giving him enough strength to lift the upturned vehicle far enough for momentum to take over. It landed on its side, providing cover, and freeing Connie from the weight.

Quick, desperate breaths filled her lungs with air and her head began to feel a little less scrambled.

“Help me with Wyoming,” North said, behind her.

There was red pooling beneath Wyoming, splattered over the stark white of his armour. A single shot to the gut, from the hail of bullets now raining down on their position. The Warthog had blocked most of them, but at its old angle it had left Wyoming open. Bright white against the dark tones of the city, he’d been an easy target for whoever was shooting at them.

“I—” Connie started, but faltered. Had she imagined it? Had she misunderstood the drawing of his weapon as an attack, rather than a snapshot of a moment before he could return fire? Had he drawn his weapon at all?

The pistol beside her only answered one of those questions, if that. Her own pistol had been knocked loose in the crash and was nowhere to be seen. M6s all looked the same. It could have been hers.

It had to be hers, right?

“Alright,” she said at last, scrambling to help North drag Wyoming up against the Warthog despite the fresh wave of agony it caused her. Her suit released a small dose of painkillers, but it was limited; their faculties had to stay intact. Only York’s healing unit was theoretically capable of maintaining an injured soldier in the field.

“Apply biofoam,” North said. He propped his rifle on the carcass of the Warthog, eye to the scope.

Connie swallowed the lump in her throat and pulled out her biofoam canister. Pressing the injector into Wyoming’s wound, she leaned close, close enough to be heard through the helmets.

“What the _hell_ was that Wyoming?!” she asked, releasing the foam.

Wyoming hissed in pain. “I haven’t— haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about, Connecticut.”

Connie looked back at the pistol.

It _must_ have been hers.

Right?

Another burst of bullets flew overhead and Connie ducked on instinct, pressing close to the Warthog. Wyoming was tucked into the hollow of the seating compartment, his breathing levelling out as the Biofoam did its work. TEAMBIO showed his blood pressure and other vitals stabilising. He’d live.

“Stay down, CT,” North said, half-crouched with his back against the Warthog’s chassis. “You’re injured too. Don’t say you’re not, I can see it on the TEAMBIO.”

“We need EVAC,” she said, leaning her weight against the roll-cage. “Who’s _shooting_ at us? The Innies?”

“No,” North said, through gritted teeth. “It’s police. It’s the city police.”

Connie blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” North said, “ _oh_.”

The blare of sirens came into the forefront. North propped his sniper rifle back on the overturned Warthog and started returning fire, trying to buy them even a few seconds’ reprieve.

“We _need_ EVAC,” Connie repeated, firmer this time. “Now, North, before—”

A shockwave slammed into her chest and almost knocked North off his feet a whole second before the _crash_ shattered the atmosphere. Screams erupted from the civilians still on the road and people began to run, powdered glass and debris blowing onto the freeway from the blast.

Fresh agony blossomed in Connie’s chest, the wind knocked out of her.

“Breathe, CT, _breathe_ ,” North said, and she tried to comply.

She’d just gotten her breathing back under her own control when the next three explosions happened and the tower— the _target_ —in the distance crumbled and fell. Clouds of debris plumed and expanded, glass and steel raining down on the freeway in chunks.

North threw himself over Connie and Wyoming, shielding his crouched teammates with his body until Connie dragged him down. The shell of the hog took the brunt of it, the debris rattling and clinking and banging against the metal before cascading to the ground.

“What the fuck was that?!” Connie said. Another flash of pain through her ribs and she doubled over, gritting her teeth.

“That,” North said, “was a MAC blast followed by a secondary explosion.”

“What about Team A?” Connie said. “We’re not in range for SQUADBIO. They could be—”

“They’re alive. The Director wouldn’t have made that order unless the objective in the tower was complete.”

“And you’d know that how?”

North pulled himself back to his feet. “After we left, Bjørndal Cryogenics Platform was blown to high hell. Heard about it after the fact, but… I’m going to hazard this is the same deal.”

Connie’s jaw dropped. “Wait, _what?_ ”

North pressed back against the hog and peered around the end. “Police are reorienting. We could make a break for it, but…” He knew Wyoming and Connie’s injuries were too severe to run. They _needed_ EVAC.

Filing the new information about Bjørndal away for later, Connie focused on the now. Whilst North repositioned himself, ready to resume covering fire, she tried to call in Alaska, but an error flashed on her HUD.

“ _Shit_. My long-range radio must have broken when I hit the ground.”

“I’ll call in, just give me—” North cut off. “Team B is down,” he said. At the corner of Connie’s HUD, Carolina’s signal flashed, but no audio came from the speakers, “we have wounded and are taking fire!” Pause. “Negative, get the package, get it out of the city.”

The tracker was still active. Rhee Seibel had not been caught in the multi-car pileup that now blocked an entire sector of the freeway.

Team A had the Sarcophagus. Soon, they’d have the codes.

Connie cursed under her breath.

Team B remained stuck behind their crashed vehicle for another three excruciating minutes that felt more like hours before Alaska swooped back around, rear bay open and the ship already being pelted with enemy fire.

Florida stood at the foot of the ramp. He took Wyoming from North, supporting him until he could collapse into the seat by the door. It was the first time Connie had seen Florida since the briefing. He hadn’t been assigned to a team. He hadn’t been in the Pelican on the way out. He didn’t return to the ramp to help North and Connie into the ship.

What was he _doing_ there?

North pulled himself up and he offered Connie a hand, dragging her inside much to the protest of her ribs. She stumbled and North caught her, holding her steady as the Pelican zipped off.

“Easy there. Let’s get you into a harness,” North said. Connie opened her mouth to protest, but all that came out was a pained noise. “That’s what I thought. C’mon.”

Begrudgingly, she let him lead her to one of the seats and guide her carefully down into it. She shifted until her ribs didn’t feel ready to burst from her chest and breathed slowly, biting her lip to cut off any more undignified sounds at the pass.

“Looks like you have some broken ribs and probably a concussion,” North said. He crouched down, setting a medical kit he must have grabbed from the wall on the seat beside her. “Do you want some painkillers?”

“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth, much more interested in the view she had over his shoulder.

Florida hovered over Wyoming, a biofoam cannister in hand. Useless, since Connie had already filled Wyoming’s wound and staunched the bleeding, but a good excuse to hover close. Close enough to talk through the helmets.

The pistol had been left on the tarmac. Her pistol? His?

North was right about the concussion. Didn’t concussions make you confused? Make you forget things?

“CT, you don’t have to act tough,” North said, snapping her back to reality.

“I’m _not._ I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve had worse.”

North, to his credit, didn’t push any further. He sighed and gave a disapproving, “Alright then,” but he left her alone after that.

Connie dropped her head against the back of the seat and groaned.

What the hell was going on with this mission?

No more chatter came in from Team A for almost five minutes. When it did, it was Wash, reporting in from where he’d just found York on the wrong end of a closed tunnel, shouting about Texas and Carolina ‘going at it’. A quick detour and they were at their position, offering them helping hands into the back of the ship.

“—I had Niner drop me off,” Wash said, continuing a conversation from outside. “Or, well, she gave me one pass above the ground, and I had to jump out. I wanted to see if I could help. Instead, I find you on your own.”

“Carolina ran off after Texas and the package,” York said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Speed unit and everything. She really doesn’t want Texas to get there first for some reason.”

“Well,” Connie said, “can you blame her? Texas wasn’t on the roster. When I asked, the Director refused to say she was coming.”

“Yeah, but— we’re on the same side. It doesn’t matter who gets it,” York said.

 _It does if you want to retain your position when the Director starts playing favourites,_ Connie thought, but didn’t say. She gave him nothing but a shrug and the accompanying hiss of pain.

“What the _hell_ happened at the facility?” North said.

“Well, things were going fine on the inside—” (“You set off the alarm, York.”) “—then we got up to the roof and Texas was there. With a transmitter,” York said. “Next thing we know, we’re at the centre of an explosion and the building started collapsing in on itself!”

“We had to jump off the roof,” Wash said, then, “Wait, how the hell did you and Carolina—?”

“Oh, Maine caught us. In a flying car. Blasting rap music.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Then drove like a madman until I took over. Knocked several other cars off the road.”

“Okay, that I believe— wait, _you_ took over?”

“Carolina was manning the turret and with how Maine was driving, the recently half-blind guy was actually a better choice,” York said with a shrug.

“Something tells me you weren’t supposed to see Texas planting that transmitter,” Connie said.

“Probably not,” he said, nonchalant as ever. “Carolina said something about Texas’ name being hidden from the roster. About the oil platform blowing up and someone covering our tracks. Guess that’s her.”

Florida popped up on York’s blind side, startling him. “Sorry to interrupt, fellas, but I just got an alert from command that the package has been successfully acquired by Agent Texas.”

“Guess we know who got there first,” Connie snipped.

The bay fell quiet.

They arrived at Carolina’s position mere seconds later.

She was limping, every step a painful looking ordeal. Her arm was slung across her abdomen, probably cradling broken ribs. Her helmet dangled from her fingers. She’d taken a beating.

York offered her an arm and she took it, a pained hiss escaping through gritted teeth. She braced herself against him as they took off and let him guide her to a seat.

“What happened, Lina?” York said.

“Texas won,” Carolina said. “This time.”

“I meant more like what happened to you _physically_. You look like you were hit by a truck!”

Carolina gave him a dark look. “I _was._ ”

“Oh. Well, shit.”

Shaking her head, Carolina scanned the bay and frowned. “Where’s Maine?” she said, standing with a start. “Did you not go and pick them up first?! They could be bleeding out they could be—”

Her legs gave out from under her. York barely caught her before she hit the floor.

“Wait,” Wash said, pushing up his harness. “What happened to Maine?”

“One of the damn Innies emptied a clip into their _throat_ ,” Carolina seethed, teeth grit together again. “They got back up and got hit by a _truck_ and _thrown_ off the damn freeway.”

“What?!” Connie and Wash exclaimed at once.

“Where are they? Where were they thrown? Alaska!” Wash was at the door in an instant, slamming his fist against the metal. “Alaska open up! We have to go find Maine!”

The door opened. “I don’t have a location signal from them.”

“Their gear must have been damaged,” Connie said, swallowing. “My radio broke when I hit the ground. If they got hit harder than I did—it’s possible their tracking beacon was damaged. We’re out of range of basic IFF.”

“I know where they fell,” Carolina said. Grabbing York’s shoulder, she pushed herself back to her feet once again. York tried to support her, but she only pushed her helmet into his arms and limped her way into the cockpit on her own. “Head back to the upper level of the freeway, northwards. You can’t miss the damage we left behind.”

Wash started pacing the bay, popping his helmet’s seals and pushing it up so he could dig out his dog tags from beneath his suit and stuff them in his mouth. He bit down, _hard_. So hard Connie heard his teeth scrape across the metal.

He chewed them the entire time they were searching for Maine.

They found them propped up against a crash barrier, barely conscious but conscious all the same. Blood streaked down the front of their suit in ugly smears, up across the jaw of their helmet. Pieces of the metal of their suit were twisted and broken, torn from bullets passing through.

The growl that greeted them _gargled_.

No one was strong enough to lift them. Maine had pulled themself over the edge of the ramp before anyone even had the chance to try; they pushed away helping hands and snarled, then choked. Blood splattered across the floor. It dripped from their wounds, a bullet hole in the chest leaking just as vibrantly as their throat.

“They should _not_ be conscious,” York said, just in time for Maine to collapse.

“Get them onto their back,” Carolina ordered. “I don’t care how much they weigh, roll them over.”

Only when they were rolled over did the extent of their injuries become truly clear. Their throat was a bloody mess of torn kevlar and tissue and—

Hit by a full-body shudder, Connie gagged, the jolt sending stabbing pain through her chest, and had to look away.

“The life support functions of their helmet are still working,” Wash said, audibly swallowing. “They need— they need blood, biofoam for the bullet wound, pain killers… we don’t come equipped with polymerised haemoglobin in medkits, we’re going to need a blood match.”

“I’m a universal donor,” Connie said, forcing herself to turn back towards them. She kept her eyes away from their throat. “I can do it.”

“CT, you’re injured,” North said.

“Not in any way that matters.” Already out of her chair, she unfastened her gauntlet, pulled off her glove and rolled back the kevlar covering her arm. “I can do it.”

She had to help.

She _had_ to help them.

Wash’s constant studying of the field manuals paid off. With no combat medic amongst them, the resident jack-of-all-trades successfully drew and transfused the required blood from Connie to Maine, whilst guiding the others through basic methods for stabilising their condition. Biofoam in the bullet wound. Intravenous painkillers. Pressure applied to the throat wound.

“C’mon big guy…” Connie heard him mutter. “C’mon, Maine… I’m sorry I was still angry at you. Please don’t die.”

The words felt like a fist wrapped around her heart and _squeezing_ , the sight of the seemingly indestructible Maine laid out on the ground like a punch in the gut. The needle in her arm was sharp and intrusive, the stench of blood in the air burning the back of her throat. Her ribs seemed to shift uncomfortably in her torso, the pain hitting in waves, a sensory and emotional nightmare tied tightly into one horrible package.

This mission was meant to go wrong.

But it was never meant to go wrong like _this._


	12. Moving Too Fast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a763114c52d071f029b70a32080f245e/29ffdf861a490110-54/s640x960/ae927378590757ae72fd695c89e8db026c59bb83.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro.

“Congratulations, agents,” the Director said, layered in sarcasm and venom, “you not only _barely_ achieved your primary objectives, but also alerted every member of the Insurrectionist command structure to our intentions in the process.”

Alpha Squad stood in a line, backs ramrod straight and heads held high. Only Maine and Wyoming had been excused from debriefing and the Director had seemed reluctant even then. Wyoming had only been permitted to leave when a particularly ballsy medic had argued with the Director. Similar arguments made in favour of Carolina and Connie had been shot down.

They could stand and they weren’t bleeding. The fact that Carolina was clearly only on her feet out of dogged determination didn’t seem to matter.

What minimal dose of painkillers Connie’s suit had given her had long since worn off. Her head was swimming and breathing was a painful endeavour that somehow seemed to leave her more lightheaded than she’d already felt.

The Director’s yelling certainly didn’t help.

“Team B,” he said. North and Connie both stood a little stiffer. “You failed to complete a simple retrieval without causing a multi-car pileup in the middle of a public freeway. Had you not failed, Team A would not have been required to clean up your mess and the near disaster would have been averted. Had you not _failed_ , then we would not have drawn so much unwanted attention. Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”

“No, sir,” North said. That was the answer the Director wanted.

It wasn’t the answer he’d get off her. “All due respect, sir, but Team B wasn’t equipped for the objective you assigned us. Not only that, but if anything drew attention to our activities, _sir,_ it was the MAC blast that levelled a skyscraper in the _middle_ of the _city._ ”

Someone let out an audible hiss of discomfort and Connie could almost feel the air in the room thicken.

“Your inability to complete your assignment is not the responsibility of the system which believed you to be capable, Agent,” the Director snapped, leaning across the table to get into her space. She didn’t pull back. “Watch your tongue, Agent Connecticut. Less patient men than I would have half the mind to cut it out for such incessant insubordination!”

Connie flinched—not at the words, but at the volume, his raised voice like a knife in her skull. She swayed on her feet until she caught herself, biting back another wave of pain to stand to attention.

“Sorry, _sir,_ ” she said. “Won’t happen again, _sir._ ”

His gaze bore down on her for a long, unbroken moment, before he finally looked away and addressed the group as a whole. “Had Agent Texas not retrieved the package,” Carolina’s stance shifted at the mention of Texas’ name, “the next stage of Project Freelancer’s ambitions would have been delayed indefinitely. I expect better of the Agents that are supposed to be the _best_ that our project has to offer.”

Carolina’s shoulders fell, almost imperceptibly. The slightest motion in the corner of Connie’s eye.

Perhaps he hadn’t intended it as a targeted jab, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t come across as one.

The Director prattled on and on, his tongue as sharp as the knife those ‘less patient men’ would have used to cut Connie’s own. There were more things Connie wanted to say. More objections she wanted to voice, despite her false promise that she’d quiet her disobedient words. Only, the longer and the louder he talked, the more unsettled her head became. The volume hurt, but the droning words made it spin in circles, unable to find a foothold in reality to cling onto.

It was North’s voice that eventually drew her back from the brink. “If I may, sir, we have reason to think CT has a serious concussion, and Carolina’s very clearly suffering from broken ribs—they need to be seen to by the medics as soon as possible. Without medical attention, they won’t be able to perform at their best in the future, sir.”

Multiple seconds passed. North stared back at the Director, unmoving. Until, finally, his jaw taut, the Director spat out a reluctant, “Very well. Dismissed.”

Washington was out of the room before the final syllable had fallen. It didn’t take a genius to guess where he was headed.

Everyone else held their composure until the doors to the bridge shut behind them. Carolina slumped, leaning her weight against the wall before she accepted York’s help and let him support her, as they slowly walked down the hall towards medical.

“Do you need help, CT?” North asked, cutting through the static buzzing around her skull. “Or will you be okay to make it to medical on your own?”

Connie wasn’t quite sure of the answer. Uttering a faint ‘uhhhh’ sound, buying herself time to think, her eyes wandered around the hall until they fell on a purple figure only metres away. North’s eyes followed hers.

“I think… I’ll be okay,” Connie said.

North nodded. “Alright. Take care, CT.”

“Thank you,” Connie said, catching him just as he went to leave. “I… probably would have passed out in there, if he’d made us stay any longer.”

“You’d have done the same thing,” he said, and he was right. “See you later, CT.”

He left and South approached, coming into focus. Her helmet was off and her face was creased with worry, fingers finding the seals of Connie’s own helmet and pulling it away. A gentle hand cupped the side of Connie’s face and she sagged into it. She winced, when the motion hurt her ribs.

“The medical alert went out across the ship and— _fuck_ , mischief,” South said, thumb brushing over the curve of Connie’s cheek. “So fucking scared it was gonna be you.”

“Not this time,” Connie said. Flashes of a pistol aimed at her head crossed her mind, but fell apart at the seams. “I think I just have a concussion and a couple broken ribs, nothing major. I’m okay.”

“That’s not ‘okay’, mischief,” South said. “C’mon. We’re getting your ass to medical. Think you can get on my back without fucking yourself up more?”

“Yeah, yeah I think so.”

South turned and crouched, letting Connie clamber onto her back and latch on. Careful not to jostle her, South stood up and started to walk towards medical. Connie held on tight, nuzzling her face against the sliver of exposed skin between her hairline and kevlar suit. Soft hair tickled her nose, but she only nuzzled closer, inhaling slowly.

Steady as she always was, for her, South was an island in a turbulent ocean.

Even her spitting anger, frustration aimed at the Director and her brother and how she should have _been_ there, how she could have gotten the case and no one would have had to get hurt, was grounding. Familiar enough to comfort and just loud enough to keep her alert, without sending her head spinning in an entirely new direction.

She didn’t know what she’d do without her.

The moment they stepped foot in medical Connie was whisked away by doctors to be dragged through all of the usual tests. Whilst one pulled the BIOCOM data from her suit, another performed a full-body scan and yet another examined her physical responses, each set of tests blurring into the next in a whirlwind of activity.

Her concussion was confirmed quickly; her headache, confusion, nausea and a dent in her helmet that wasn’t supposed to dent were all sure signs of a head injury. A standard injection of _Chorotazine_ would reduce her recovery time from weeks to days, but she was under strict orders to stay close to people so that they could monitor her.

“Head injuries are still tricky,” the doctor said. “We don’t want you passing out with no one around and either a) hit your head again, making it worse or b) bleed out from some imperceptible brain bleed with no one to bring you back to us.”

“Reassuring words, doc.”

The doctor just beamed. “I know.”

The broken ribs weren’t far behind. The scans confirmed the extent of the damage, but it was obvious that they were broken once her kevlar undersuit had been stripped away to reveal ugly bruising stretching down her side. With the help of the x-rays, they identified the exact ribs that were damaged and were able to inject the bone-knitting polymer that would have them healed up in a fraction of the natural time.

One of the strangest things about moving from civilian to military life had been the speed in which recovery was enforced. Even now, after years, the pace of it felt breakneck. Whereas civilians, for whom access to many of these technologies was more limited, could be off work for weeks recovering, there was no such luxury in the military. Time was a resource you couldn’t afford to waste.

The Director believed that more strongly than anyone Connie had ever known.

The injection wasn’t pleasant, it never was. They gave her the usual talk about minimising her activity for the next forty-eight hours, then provided her with a perpetual cooling pack and some low-dose painkillers to stave off the worst of the discomfort.

South, bless her, had retrieved her some of her clothes from her locker. With her helmet shipped off for repairs and the rest of her suit tossed into basic processing, it was not only necessary but welcome. Slipping into the soft material of her shirt and sweats was an unmatched relief.

“Alright, c’mon you poor, battered little enby,” South said, whilst carefully scooping her up from her seat. Connie wrapped her legs around her waist and one arm around her neck, the other holding the cooling pack to her ribs. “Let’s get you somewhere more comfortable.”

“Wait, not yet,” Connie said. South raised a brow at her. “I want to go and see Wash. Maine was taken straight to surgery; he’ll be waiting for them.”

South rolled her eyes with a smile. “You’re too nice for your own good, you know that? I was gonna take you to fuckin’ bed but you’ll just make your own way there if I don’t fuckin’ take you, won’t you?”

“Mmmaybe,” Connie hummed, face pressed into South’s throat.

“That’s a fuckin’ yes in your language, mischief. Fine, fine, to Washingfuck it is.”

He was exactly where Connie expected he’d be: sat in the row of seats outside the surgery wing, staring at the monitor next to the operating theatre with wide, wild eyes. His dog tags were once again trapped between his teeth; Connie could hear the scraping from the door.

“Wash…?” she said, softly. His head snapped around, wild eyes turned on her, but his face softening when he realised who it was. Tapping South on the shoulder got Connie set down on her feet. “Can I sit by you?”

Wash nodded, and Connie noticed he was rocking, just slightly, in his seat.

His fingernails were buried in his arm, scratching the skin and leaving red marks in their wake. The seats were uncomfortable, but Connie made herself as comfortable as possible beside Wash, offering him a hand to hold if he wanted it. Thankfully, he took it, grasping her hand tightly but carefully, the nails that had been so violently clawing at himself nothing but a faint pressure against her skin.

Even then, he never took his eyes off the monitor.

The barely restrained meltdown was carved into every tense muscle in his body.

“They’ll be okay,” Connie said, reassuring herself almost as much as she was reassuring him. “They’re tough. They pulled _themself_ into the Pelican, even after all that damage. They’ll make it through this.”

“I-I know. I know. I know. I—” His lips pursed and he took a deep breath, cutting off the repetitive spiral before it could take full hold.

Speaking caused his dog tags to fall loose from his teeth. They were wet and had fresh scrape marks.

“South, in my locker there’s a spare chew Wash gave me one time. Can you go and get it?” Connie said. South gave her a ‘really?’ look. “I’m with Wash, that counts as supervision. And it’ll only take you a couple minutes. Please, for me?”

“…dammit, fine,” South said. “For you.”

She returned a few minutes later with the old chew, shaped like a music note. Connie looped it around Wash’s neck and he popped it into his mouth in an instant. The silicone would likely split under the brutal assault of his anxiety, but it was better than him breaking his teeth.

“…thanks,” he murmured, rocking a little less.

“Do you want reassurance, or just company?” Connie asked.

“Company.”

“Alright. Company it is.”

Connie tucked herself up against his side, holding his hand in hers, and gave him the companionship he needed.

Exhaustion settled over her soon enough. Painkillers had taken the edge off and there was no longer any adrenaline to keep her going. The consequences for her bold words and stubborn choices would find her soon enough, but she couldn’t say she had the energy to care. All that mattered in that moment was being there for her friend, as he faced down the fear of a loved one being lost forever.

Eventually, however, it was too much even for her to power through. Her eyelids began to droop, and South began trying to convince her to leave, but it was only when Carolina, looking almost as tired as Connie felt, came in and offered to take over that she agreed.

Wash wouldn’t be alone. That was all she needed to know.

South carried her to their bunk, holding her almost protectively against her chest. Connie buried her face in the crook of her neck and was close to falling asleep right there in her arms, only retaining consciousness through what force of will she still had to spare.

South helped her change into her night clothes and apologised to her with kisses after every accompanying grunt of pain. She combed through Connie’s greasy hair as she brushed her teeth. Then, she fluffed up her pillows and blanket, making them as comfortable as possible for Connie.

It was rare, these days, that they didn’t sleep besides each other, but there was no comfortable way to share the narrow beds with broken ribs in mind.

“Alright, you exhausted little shit—” South said, making Connie giggle, “—sooner you heal up, sooner we can go back to snuggling up instead of having to sleep in separate beds like lonely fuckers.”

“Mm, one last thing,” Connie said, half-way to laying down. South gave her a look, but she planted her hand on her face and took care of that. “I just have to send a message. Time sensitive. _Then_ I’ll sleep.”

“Connie, babe, c’mon. You are _barely_ fucking conscious.”

“This conversation is taking longer than it’d take me to send it.”

“Ugh, you’re right, as always.” South lifted Connie’s hand from her face and kissed the palm. “Go on.”

Connie grabbed her data-pad from the side table and pulled up her message chain with Mass. It was a quick message, like she promised: <I can meet up in four days, to work on that fix. All squad rec room at lunch?>

“There,” she said, putting the data-pad down. “See, that was quick.”

“Yeah, yeah, you have speedy little fingers,” South said, kissing her on the forehead, “now go the fuck to sleep.”

With that, Connie was out like a light.

By morning, her comm. band was flashing up a storm.

Alerts about board positions were interspersed with messages from Wash, Mass and more. The adjustments had been done in waves, spread out throughout the evening and night; Connie had apparently been moved all the way to tenth once, only to end up at position eight by the end of it all.

South had risen back to seventh, though she was quick to dismiss it with a snort and derisive laugh. “It was a necessary fuckin’ evil for the dickass in charge. Couldn’t put everyone in their rightful places if I was still in ninth, could he?”

Connie couldn’t argue with that. Wyoming had taken that place at number nine, the lowest he had ever fallen. York had reclaimed his spot beneath Carolina, pushing Maine into fourth—a position, Connie imagined, they’d soon lose to recovery time—and North had fallen into sixth. However, those changes weren’t the most interesting thing about the new ranks; far from it.

No, that honour went to the presence of Agent Texas, who now sat squarely at number one—the position Carolina had held for as long as the board had been visible. Longer, even. She’d been leading Alpha since day one.

Would Texas take over? Or, as the star and band symbol still beside Carolina’s name suggested, would Carolina continue to lead without any of the standard accreditation?

Connie’s head hurt just thinking about it. There were new pieces to the puzzle that was Agent Texas, but putting it all together would have to wait until her head stopped feeling like it had been run over by a truck.

She minimised the board and scrolled back to her messages. Her finger hovered over Wash’s for a long ten seconds before she decided to open Mass’s first.

MA//: <Sounds good to me. I’m heading off on a mission today, but unless something goes very wrong then I should be back by then.>

MA//: <Good to know you’re alive, at least.>

CT//: <Just about. Good luck. Hopefully we can get this TURNCOAT problem solved when you’re back.>

The ‘seen’ indicator stayed greyed out, but if ze was on a mission, then that was to be expected.

Four days. Three, until she could talk to Rat and Needles directly again. If all went well, she would arrive to that meeting with Mass with concrete evidence of what was happening at the Project. Or, at least, the things she knew about.

 _If_ all went well.

She took a deep breath, before she finally opened the messages from Wash, and released it when she saw the fateful words:

WA//: <Maine survived the surgery.>

What followed was full of typos and amounted to little more than incoherent rambling fuelled by relief. The final message was one word: ‘tired’, before the chain ended as he’d no doubt fallen asleep.

“We should go and see if he’s okay,” Connie said. “Grab something from the mess hall for him. He always did it for me.”

“Sure,” South said, muffled as she pulled her shirt over her head. “I got a free hour and you still need supervision.”

Connie gave her a look. “I’m _fine.”_

“Doctor’s orders, mischief,” South said with a grin. “Doctor’s orders.”

At least South was the kind of supervision she could enjoy.

They smuggled breakfast snacks and a to-go cup of coffee from the mess hall in the pockets of hoodies and sweats, swearing any agent that saw them to secrecy. They crinkled as they moved and the coffee created a weird hot spot on South’s thigh, but their illicit goods made it past the dividing line between the living zone and training zone without issue.

The training floor was one of the many sectors that stood between them and medical. Passing through was no hassle, but Connie’s attention was drawn by the sound of F.I.L.S.S.’s voice, resetting a training scenario. The floor was not only reopened after its repairs, but it was active.

When South tripped and dropped a small hoard of their cargo onto the floor, Connie took the chance to look.

The bright aqua form of Carolina stood stark in the middle of the grey metal floor, the tornado of kicks and punches she formed stilted and stiff in comparison to that night only a month ago.

“What’s her problem?” South said, coming up behind her. The rustling gave her away before her voice did. “No one has a scheduled session this early and didn’t she fuck herself up too, yesterday?”

“She did,” Connie said, brow knitted. “Broken ribs, at the very least. Probably worse. She shouldn’t be down there.”

“Looks like she’s been at it a fuckin _while_ too,” South said, nodding towards the clock on one of the tracking screens.

 _<_ Session Timer: 7:05:34. _>_

Carolina’s own words flashed to the forefront of Connie’s mind. ‘ _I don’t like coming back from missions with injured._ ’

“…she’s going to crash, hard,” Connie said, her own ribs aching in sympathy. The polymer had been doing its job, she felt better that morning than she had the night before, but that was only because she’d actually rested. If Carolina had stayed up all that time… “Do you think we should message someone?”

South sighed. “I’ll drop fuckin’ York a line. I’d say Maine, they got her to her room last time, but…”

“Yeah,” Connie said, matching her sigh. “But.”

Maine looked too large for the hospital bed they were laid in. The sight of their colossal form, firm lines etched out beneath the hospital sheets, froze Connie at the doorway. It was wrong, fundamentally _wrong,_ to see them like this, hooked up to machines to breathe for them, to keep them alive.

They hated needles, they hated _hospitals_.

Washington was sat at their bedside, begrudgingly conscious and looking every bit as emotionally drained as Connie had expected from his messages. There were bags forming under his eyes and his bottle-blonde hair was a mess, sticking out in all directions. He’d been pulling it.

“Hey,” he croaked. Coughing to try and clear the frog in his throat, he beckoned them over. “Come in.”

Connie hesitated for just a moment longer before stepping inside, South close behind. Wash raised a brow at the crinkling sounds that followed and Connie couldn’t help but smile, a little, despite where they were.

“We brought illicit breakfast,” she said, waving a small handful of snack packets.

Wash blinked, then laughed; it was a tired sound, but genuine. “Illicit breakfast, huh?”

“Take your pick of our smuggled goods. Except the almond and chocolate. You know who that’s for.”

“I do,” he said. He eyed the selection provided and snatched up a pecan and banana bar, a pack of rehydrated fruit and the coffee—which he downed with alarming speed. “Uh, thanks. I… don’t think I ate at all last night.”

“Not even one of Maine’s jello cups? You’re not doing med-bay right, rookie,” South said, arms folded. Of course, with Maine in the state they were in, there were no jello cups to take, but the comment didn’t have to be accurate to do its job. Wash smiled again, regardless, and gave her as much of a ‘really?’ look as he could muster.

“You _cannot_ still be on the rookie thing,” Wash said, around a mouthful of pecan granola.

“Fuck yeah I can be. You ever known me to drop fuckin’ _anything_ , rookie?”

“Fair point.”

Connie pulled up a chair and sat beside him, South hovering over her shoulder. They ate in comfortable silence for a while, sustenance returning some of the life to Wash’s eyes and colour to his cheeks. South leaned over and stole bits of the snacks they’d opened instead of just opening her own and it was one of those bubbles in time where everything almost felt _normal_.

Of course, such bubbles always burst.

“How uh, how are they?” Connie asked, nodding towards Maine.

Wash stuffed the remainder of the bar into his mouth and chewed. The sharp beeping of the monitor alone held the air for a long second, before Wash sighed and swallowed, enough time bought for him to think.

“They’ll recover, in time. Mostly, at least. They got lucky, the sniper bullet in the chest missed anything vital and the— the clip in the throat,” he exhaled, “didn’t paralyze them. It destroyed the rest of their throat and their jaw is being re-grown by the polymer, but… it could’ve been worse.”

Connie rested a hand on his knee and squeezed. He, in turn, rested his own over hers.

“They won’t be able to breathe on their own again until they’ve grown flash clone replacements for their windpipe and— some of the other structures, I don’t know.” Shaking his head, he looked at them with sadness in his eyes. “They said something about their larynx and vocal cords and how they’re difficult to clone or— something, the takeaway was that they’re probably not going to be able to speak again. Not properly, or without pain, at least.”

“Poor Maine…” Connie said.

“Guess it’s lucky they fuckin’ already know sign language and all that shit,” South mused, draping her arms around Connie’s shoulders. Her chin dug into the top of her head. “They never talked much, anyway.”

Wash glared at her. “That doesn’t make it any better, South.”

“Hey,” South held her hands up, “never fuckin’ said it did. Still fucking sucks.”

“I— right. Sorry.” He dragged his hands down his face and took a deep breath. “They’re going to need more surgeries and they’ll probably be out of action for… months. Which is…”

Almost unheard of. Almost anywhere else, even _York_ wouldn’t have been allowed to stay on the ship long enough to return to the field. The fact Command hadn’t made his return dependent on a replacement for his damaged eye was more a matter of the Director’s desire to retain the agents who he had invested in than of standard procedure.

If Maine had not been _what_ they were and _where_ they were—a Spartan, tied up in a highly selective operation like Project Freelancer—they would have been medically discharged long before their recovery was complete.

“At least that means they’re not going anywhere,” Connie said, trying her best to look and sound reassuring.

Wash sighed and nodded. Carefully, he laced his fingers with Maine’s and stroked arches over their skin with his thumb. There was no response, no comforting squeeze in return, but he relaxed anyway. The weight of their hand in his was enough.

It was true that Maine had never been a big talker, South was right about that. On some level, perhaps, that was comforting, to know that Maine would get by one way or another. Connie had witnessed Wash and Maine hold entire conversations without them having ever uttered an actual word, Wash responding to growls and body language.

Yet at the same time, Connie had seen the way that Maine spoke when they _wanted_ to. The way they talked about the stars, wrapping their mouth around large words and names that they usually struggled with, made the nights they’d spent in the observation deck what they were. Made Maine happy.

So yes, they’d get by; but that didn’t mean nothing was lost.

“…I should’ve been there,” Wash said, never taking his eyes away from Maine. “I should have been on the freeway with the others.”

“Did you have a choice in the matter, Wash?” Connie asked.

“I— well, no, not really. Texas kicked the Sarcophagus into the Pelican with me on the back and I had to convince Niner to even drop me off when she did so—”

Connie cut him off, “Then don’t blame yourself for it. What happened… happened. You likely couldn’t have changed it if you _were_ there, but you certainly can’t change it now, y’know?”

“I know,” Wash said. “Knowing just doesn’t make it feel any less shit.”

Now wasn’t that the truth.

Connie’s scheduled sessions were cleared for the next few days, to allow for her full recovery. It left her with little to do but sit and watch over Maine in Wash’s stead, when he was inevitably forced to return to his own training. They were still unconscious and so the room was quiet, almost uncomfortably so. Only the sharp beeping of their heartbeat on the monitors broke the silence and Connie found herself talking aloud, just to ease the air somewhat.

Her head was less scrambled than it had been the day before, but she wasn’t at her best; there was no work she could get done. No, she was left to pass the time by reading aloud, hoping that maybe Maine could hear, or playing mindless data-pad games, essentially washing that time down the drain.

Her next meeting with Needles and Rat was hovering on the horizon, but blocking the way was hour upon hour that she should have spent checking her data, digging deeper. It was _maddening_ to be unable to do what she was _supposed_ to be doing, to be left floundering in an open expanse of time she wanted nothing more than to take advantage of.

Only the periodic visits by the medical staff gave her any sense of how much time had passed. Events came and went without any real frame of reference. Wash or South appeared, sometimes, whenever their schedule allowed for it. An alert rang out across the ship, at some point, but her own band was silent, so it was filed away with all the other mundane and yet stand-out moments that broke up the monotony.

Every few hours, she’d get up and stretch her legs by taking a lap through the public recovery ward where Wyoming and, eventually, Carolina could be found. After being remanded to the infirmary to recover from her overextension on the training floor, Carolina had spent much of the next two days sleeping and when she was awake, she held no patience for idle conversation.

Connie couldn’t blame her. Though she was never quite sure if it was only in _her_ that Carolina had no interest, or conversation in general. Connie’s questions had always been careful, before; showing her hand like she had in recent days was bound to cause… tensions. To shine new light on old conflicts.

She’d have to go back to being careful. For her own sake.

Flashes of a pistol in her face came back stronger, as her head cleared. Flashes that were strongest when she saw Wyoming, laid up in bed, and somehow always looking at her over the edge of his data-pad whenever she glanced his way.

The more she tried to dismiss it as herself seeing things that weren’t there, the more uneasy she felt. Doubting her own perceptions was not something she took lightly, but she was well aware that the circumstances had inflated her paranoia. That, on top of a head injury known for causing confusion…

She had to be _sure_. Before she let herself panic, she had to be _sure._

Had the Project tried to kill her?

Did they know?

Three days after the mission, the day she was meant to call Needles and Rat, the Director called the conscious members of Alpha Squad into a formal meeting. Uniforms, not armour.

The sterile, black and grey uniforms weren’t necessary to set the tone, that day. The atmosphere would have been serious without any aid, but it was more than that; it was grim. Alpha’s squad of ten stood only eight strong, the mysterious Agent Texas apparently excused from this meeting and Maine still unconscious in the infirmary. Their losses still hung heavy in the air, behind unsaid words and unasked questions.

Everybody had somewhere they’d rather be and after the brutal dressing down they’d received after the failed mission, no one was eager to hear what the Director had to say.

Connie had known what it would be before she’d even stepped in the room.

“Agents,” the Director said, the one firm word that forced everyone to stand to attention. “You have been called here today to discuss the future operations of Project Freelancer. As you are all aware, Project Freelancer has been granted the opportunity to test a variety of experimental equipment designed to enable individual soldiers to better perform against our Covenant enemies.”

Nevermind that Project Freelancer had never once been deployed against Covenant targets, or that they’d even turned their attention away from actual Insurrectionists onto a UNSC-sponsored operation. Advancing the fight against the Covenant may have been the Project’s official purpose, but they strayed further from it every mission.

“The first step was your armour. The second was the armour enhancements. Now, comes the next and most important step. In pursuit of our goal, Project Freelancer has been permitted the use of a number of specialised Artificial Intelligence Units.”

The wave of surprise that swept the room was subtle, but there; whilst the most disciplined of them kept their eyes dead ahead, others turned and mouthed silent exclamations, shared wide-eyed look, until the Director began to speak again.

“We are testing more than technology,” he said, “we are testing the potential for individual soldiers to do the work of hundreds with the aid of a new form of battlefield partnership.”

There it was, from the horse’s mouth. _The Goals of Project Freelancer_ , almost word for word from the drafts she’d found. An announcement slated for months before, until the Director decided that he wasn’t content with what the UNSC had given him.

Connie still didn’t know how his ‘experiments’ were linked to the increased number of available AI, but she would find out. Somehow. She had to.

“These Artificial Intelligence Units will be assigned in waves, to the agents with whom they are deemed most compatible,” the Director continued, scanning the line of agents in front of him. “Priority will be given to the members of Alpha Squad, but Beta Squad will be receiving a similar briefing later today to prepare them for the eventuality that one of the AI is best matched to them. Expect to see the first wave by the end of the month.”

 _That_ piqued everyone’s interest. Another wave of half-turned heads and questioning eyes, backs held a little straighter.

Connie’s fingernails tugged at the scar across her palm. Only three days had passed. What was _in_ that package, that the final ascension towards Project Freelancer’s apparent true purpose, which had been held back for _months,_ was now merely weeks ahead, if that? What experiments had it facilitated the success of, for multiple AI to be so close to distribution?

Playing it safe was an increasingly impossible option. As soon as they were dismissed, she needed to take a risk and dig deeper.

That should have been it. The Director had reached the end of his planned speech, but the dismissal that Connie had expected didn’t follow.

“Finally, we are making some changes to the way in which specialised computer equipment is handled in the Project,” he said. Connie didn’t feel that it was paranoia to think that his gaze fell a little too heavily on her. “Effective immediately, all such equipment that is currently checked out by agents must be returned and any future equipment loans will be temporary, upon request.”

Oh _fuck_.

“Equipment returns are expected by the end of the day. Dismissed.”

Connie put conscious effort into walking at a normal pace.

Command knew every piece of equipment she had assigned to her. While, according to the alert that went out as they left, their data-pads were considered personal items and were thus safe, she’d had the PC she had been using to access their files with her since her earliest days in the Project. Command had assigned it to her so that she could continue her work at any time, anywhere and it was _filled_ with evidence of what she’d been doing.

And she only had a day to clear it.

“Uh, babe? You gonna get dressed before you start doing whatever you’re doing down there?”

Connie was sat in her sports bra and underwear, with her PC—or, well, what used to be her PC—balanced on the edge of her footlocker, which she’d pulled across. She’d dropped her uniform haphazardly on the bed the second they’d gotten back to the room.

“Too late, I’ve already started,” Connie said.

South cocked her head. “What are you doing, anyway? Thought you’d be returning that thing right away, usually you’re super fuckin’ quick about that shit in case you get distracted and forget later.”

“I… have to remove a few things. Before I give it back.”

“Remove things? Like what?”

Connie gave her a look. South gave her one right back, until a sudden flash of realisation crossed her face.

“Oh _riiiight_ , you do all your personnel file digging and other dickery on there. Wouldn’t want them seeing that shit,” she said, as she wiggled her way into her workout pants. “How long d’you think it’s gonna take you?”

“A while. Luckily, I still have no sessions today.” It’d be cutting it close. A total wipe would be suspicious, she had to root out every piece of evidence left behind from her digging and erase any sign of it being there. More than that, she had to find somewhere to store the data she’d already collected.

“Am I gonna have to swing by here at lunch to make sure you eat?”

“…maybe.”

“You’re fuckin’ hopeless,” South said with a fond laugh, leaning down and kissing the top of her head. “So,” South sat down on the edge of her bed to lace her shoes, “what do you make of all this AI stuff?”

Connie plucked her beads from her beside table and began to roll them between her palms. “It’s… certainly interesting.”

“Interesting is one fuckin’ word for it. Outta fucking nowhere is another. Sounds kinda fuckin’ cool though, the whole—” she coughed and put on her best (worst) Director impression, “‘doing the work of hundreds of soldiers!’ shit. Don’t know about the ‘new kind of battlefield partnership’ stuff though, aren’t AI just fuckin’ fancy computers?”

“They’re a bit more than that, South,” Connie said. “AI can do a lot of things human brains can’t. Run highly complex military technology out of a suit of armour with no additional power, for example.”

“…oh, shit, that’d answer some fuckin questions wouldn’t it?”

“It certainly would.”

“Sounds fucking awesome, then. Which obviously means,” she tugged the final knot in her lace, “we’ll never see fucking cock-all from it, will we?”

Connie sighed. “…I wouldn’t hold my breath, no.”

“Least you’re fuckin’ honest with me,” South said, grabbing her towel and gym bag. Something in Connie’s chest panged. “This bitch still has training, so I’ll see you at lunch, ‘kay mischief?”

Connie leaned up to beg a kiss and South crouched down to give it, then left. 

Alone once again, as she so often was these days, Connie began the process of clearing the PC.

It wasn’t that clearing the evidence was difficult; the problem was that it was time consuming. Overwriting the portions of data deleted was something she could use a program to accomplish, but getting that done in only a matter of hours was pushing the PC to the limits of its capabilities.

And she _still_ needed somewhere to store the data she’d already gathered.

As the program did its work, Connie sat back, rolling her beads along her thigh with one hand and supporting herself with the other. The metal floor was cold against her bare legs, a sensation matched by the faint chill of her dog tags against the skin of her torso. Letting go of her beads, she lifted the tags away from her body and was going to remove them, just for a little while, when her thumb brushed over the small lip of the opening at the end.

A USB, built into the dog tags to hold all of an agent’s necessary medical information.

Bury data beneath the medical files and no one would ever think to look deeper. Hidden in plain sight.

Connie plugged the USB into the PC and got to work.

South came by as she said she would, bearing pockets full of snacks to tide Connie until dinner and affection to tide her until the evening. Careful not to break Connie’s focus, South gave her the food, wished her luck, then left again. Brief as it was, her visit was a welcome reprieve in an otherwise lonely day.

Connie didn’t finish until the evening. Deadline hovering over her head and her dog tags hanging heavy around her neck, she returned the PC with merely an hour to spare and barely convinced she’d done enough to cover her tracks.

They knew enough to talk to Wash. They knew enough to recall computer equipment.

If they knew that much, then maybe…

Connie buried the thought beneath the blankets that she and South spent the evening wrapped up in, injuries be damned.

The sense that she’d forgotten something plagued her dreams.

Morning came on the fourth day after the Sarcophagus mission and she was alone, again; South had an early slot and Connie’s own schedule was still empty. Half-awake, her face buried in her pillow and cursing herself for not turning off her internal alarms, the wave of realisation hit as she was in the process of cancelling them.

_Needles and Rat._

Connie jumped up. The covers landed in a pile at the foot of the bed and she almost tripped over them, scrambling to check the space beneath her bed from misguided habit. The PC wasn’t there, it was with Command, out of her reach. Her only point of communication with her contacts.

Contacts with whom she’d just missed her first check-in.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hissed.

She pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes and drummed her fingers against her forehead. Her basic scrambling tools were accessible from her helmet suite, but her data-pad wasn’t secure enough for external transmissions even with them active. If she wanted to contact them—and she _needed_ to contact them—she had to find a terminal capable of external communications.

Every accessible terminal with those capabilities was in a public area. She could count them off from memory.

Her best bet was a relatively isolated terminal in a short hallway between the living zone and training zone that saw little use during active sessions. It sat in a camera blind spot. Even then, it was a risk, but a risk she had no choice but to take. Things had changed, drastically; her contacts needed to know she was alive and that any further communication would be delayed. Otherwise, she wasn’t sure what they might do.

Friends of her brother they may have been, but at the end she’d barely known the person her brother had become. That alone was not enough to tell her what these people were capable of. Or perhaps it was. Perhaps the fact they’d known the man she hadn’t was a condemnation, more than a commendation.

Of course, the problem was that it was simply impossible to know.

The locker room was empty. No one was around to question why she was gearing up in full armour, when she was still on strict orders to rest. Her luck continued in the hallways, left barren by the strict schedules everyone else still adhered to. The first lunch break wouldn’t be for hours yet.

The terminals were designed with primarily internal communications and information seeking in mind, but the functionality for external connections existed to allow for calls made planetside during the _Invention’s_ stopovers in various systems. Access was strictly regulated, of course, but that had never stopped Connie before.

Signal scrambled by the very tools the Project supplied her, she input Rat’s communication code from memory and forced the connection.

It was a long ten seconds before their face appeared on the screen.

“ _See, asshole, I told you she was alive— hey!_ ”

Needles pushed them aside, much to their obvious complaint. “ _Connie! Thank god. What happened? You were supposed to make contact_ yesterday _and the last thing any of the team saw was your car overturned on the freeway, before the damn building was razed to the ground by a goddamned MAC!_ ”

The rage in his voice wasn’t hidden. It radiated from every word, stronger than any sign of relief.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Connie said, fingers drumming against the terminal. “Things got— hectic, more than I had anticipated. Something happened, during our part of the assignment; I don’t have the time to explain now, but what you need to know is—”

“ _Something happened alright. You were meant to interfere. I thought you’d be on the tower team._ ”

Connie bit her lip, hard. “The Director is unpredictable, Needles. I _hoped_ I’d be on the tower team, but there was never any guarantee and—”

“ _We almost lost two of our team to that MAC blast,_ ” Needles interrupted. Connie’s jaw clenched. _“They’re laid up in hospital, Demo lost an arm and Sharkface broke damn near every bone in his body!_ ”

“Oh, if we’re tallying injuries now, then how’s this: Maine was shot nine times in the _throat_ by one of your guys. _Nine. Times._ Their throat was like _mincemeat_ for fuck’s sake, but you don’t see me here wasting time on something neither of us can change!” Connie snapped.

“ _Yeah, you tell him!_ ” Rat said, somewhere off screen. Needles shushed them. “ _No, fuck you, she’s right. She’s trying to tell you something urgent, shut up and listen. Just because your nickname is Needles it doesn’t mean you have to be a giant fucking prick about everything!_ ”

Needles sighed. “ _…sorry. Go ahead._ ”

“Thank you,” Connie said, taking a breath. “Look. All you need to know for now is this: AI are expected to be distributed by the end of the month; I’m talking to my friend on the ship later; and I no longer have access to a PC.” Needles’ head raised, but she cut him off before he could talk, “They have… suspicions, Command has recalled all computer equipment. I’m late because I had to turn it in last night.”

“ _What?_ ” Needles said. _“Connie, that’s a bad sign._ ”

“I know.”

“ _You need to be careful and you need to get another, more secure PC they don’t know about._ ”

“I _know_ , Needles,” Connie said. “I’m _trying._ I understand, I-I just need more time to—”

Footsteps. A grey figure with pinpricks of yellow appeared in her periphery, lighter than the shadows on the walls behind him.

Her head whipped around. Washington stood at the entrance to the hallway, staring back at her.

From the angle he was at, it was possible he couldn’t see the screen. Possible.

“I have to go.” She cut the call off with a flick of her eyes.

Washington was still standing there, _staring._ If he hadn’t known something was up before, he did now. The warning about internals rang out like an alarm bell inside her head.

“What are you looking at?” she snipped, as she stalked past him. Just barely, her shoulder brushed his. “Mind your own business.”

“I should say the same,” he said, just _standing there_ , why was he still just _standing there?_

She turned the corner and broke into a sprint.

Her ribs made their protests known as soon as her armour was removed.

Her head pounding from something other than the lingering effects of the concussion, her chest tight, she found relative peace in Maine’s recovery room. They were still unconscious and would be for a few days yet, but their condition was stable. Though the repetitive pattern of their heart rate felt like it was burrowing slowly into her skull, deeper with every sharp beep, it was better than the alternatives.

It was better than being alone.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said quietly, taking hold of one of Maine’s hands. “This has all happened so fast and… being out of my depth feels like an understatement of the century.” Their hand dwarfed hers and it was warm, even now; they’d always been a human furnace and she had always found it comforting. “And you can’t hear me and even if you could, you’d have no _idea_ what I was talking about. I doubt Wash has said anything to you, you’ve had your own issues together and… and now…”

And now they were laid up in a hospital bed, put there by the very same people she was working with.

Connie’s chest tightened and she sighed. What was she doing, talking to herself? She only had an hour until her meeting with Mass. She’d have a better sense of what to do then and, with zir, she could at least talk without having to be so careful. Without _lying_.

She passed the hour in silence, after that, trying not to think about all the ways in which playing double agent was only going to get worse.

Lunchtime came and she made her way to the communal rec room, as arranged. Little-used, the room was almost empty, and its snack machine was almost untouched. Being a few minutes early, she grabbed a bag of chips and perched herself on the back of one of the sofas to wait.

Once ze arrived, she would take zir down to the observation deck to talk. Without her PC to monitor the cameras, it wasn’t as safe as she’d have liked, but it was as safe as they were going to get.

Minutes went by. Connie hummed under her breath, mentally practicing the things she was going to say to Mass. There was a lot of ground to cover, a lot of questions she needed to be able to answer and just as many that she needed to ask. It would be the first time they could speak openly, the first time Connie could share her concerns with someone she _knew_ without fearing repercussions.

Mass was a lot of things, but ze was not a snitch.

The meeting time came, then went. Connie frowned; Mass was never late for _anything_. In all the time they’d known each other, Mass had arrived at the IC after Connie _once_ and even then, ze hadn’t been late. Ze had balked at Connie’s attempt to even joke that ze was.

Still, Connie waited a couple more minutes, just in case, before deciding something was up.

Maybe ze’d forgotten. Things _had_ been busy.

Connie pulled up their comm. chain and was half-way through typing a message asking where ze was when she realised the ‘seen’ indicator on her last message was still greyed out.

A sinking feeling swept over her.

Maybe ze’d read the message preview and never actually opened it. That was possible. It was also possible that ze had misunderstood what Connie had said about the meeting location; perhaps, by mistake, ze had gone to the Beta Squad recreation room, instead.

That had to be it.

Beta Squad Rec wasn’t far. A year had passed since she’d last stepped foot in what had once acted as her main social hub, but it hadn’t changed. Everything was laid out just as she remembered and Monty was even there, splayed over the back of the worn-out couch like they often were.

Virginia was sitting on the island in the mini kitchen, playing a round of cards with Nevada.

There was no one else there.

Connie moved further inside, but a slightly better view didn’t change the facts. Mass wasn’t there, either.

“Hey, CT? Looking for someone?” Virginia said, suddenly off the island and at her side. Connie jumped back a step. “Whoa, you good?”

“I… yeah. Sorry, I don’t suppose you know where Mass is? We were supposed to meet to discuss work today and ze isn’t… here… why are you looking at me like that?”

Virginia had the look of someone who had just been asked the stupidest question she’d ever heard. Arms folded under her chest, she raised a brow. “Is this a joke?”

“What? No, I genuinely don’t know where ze is,” Connie said. With every word she said, she could feel the weight of the truth that she refused to turn and face pulling her down, down, down—tendrils wrapped tight around her legs, trying to make her _look_. “Gin, what’s wrong?”

“Fuck.” Virginia groaned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “You really don’t know?” she said. Connie shook her head. “Massie _died_ , CT.”

“ _What?_ ”


	13. TURNCOAT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/69eaddb51e00321d4f4068e8a4d464e3/0206224aaafb53e0-6f/s640x960/5f88da5497d440440a4e44b4c9bc67df47cc3b61.png) by artislon/mercysewerpyro. Credit to texelations for the briefly mentioned idea that the planet the sim bases from the first six seasons are on a single, tide-locked planet.

Dead. Mass was dead.

 _It happened again_ , she thought, swallowing the lump swelling in her throat. First her parents, then the Triplets, then her brother, and now…

The feeling of being dragged down fell away with the truth, but her knees threatened to crumple with it and it took all of her will to keep herself on her feet. To fall apart would be suspicious; as far as everyone else knew, Mass and Connie still hated each other.

“I only talked to zir a few days ago,” she said. Her mouth felt dry. “How did—?”

Virginia sighed, plucking a flask off her hip and taking a swig. “C’mere,” she said, gesturing over towards the couch. The liquid in the flask sloshed audibly with the motion. “Let’s sit down.”

She pushed Monty off the back of the couch and jerked her head towards the door, then dropped into the seat and patted the other cushion with the heel of her foot. Connie joined her, her legs tucked tightly beneath herself.

“Did Mass tell you ze was going on a mission?” Virginia asked.

Connie nodded. Already, she was picking at the scar across her hand.

“Well, it was meant to be something quick. Clearing up loose ends here in the system before we jump in a few days.” A barely perceptible shudder ran down Virginia’s spine and she took another swig of her flask. “Look at this, got me back on old habits,” she said, with another sigh. “Anyway. The objective was simple, standard fare; ze was to get in, deliver a virus ze’d created to the systems, then get out.”

Connie nodded again. “We did that a few times. Or, I did. Delivering zir viruses.”

“Yeah, so you can see why it shoulda been an in-and-out, even though ze never liked field work,” Virginia said. “Ze was running it solo. Everything was going fine, far as I know, until ze got made somehow. Ze called for extraction and they sent in a rescue team. Surprised you missed that, the alert calling them in was ship-wide.”

Oh. The alert, the first full day after Sarcophagus. Right.

Virginia scratched her neck. “Mississippi and Oklahoma were in the back of the rescue Pelican when it was shot down. Never saw it comin’. Mass was told to wait it out, but zir vitals flatlined not long after. Second rescue attempt was deemed too risky after that. Not that Missouri didn’t scream about it, poor kid wanted to go out in case his brother was somehow still alive, too.”

Connie flinched, swallowing down the urge to vomit. “Oh _god_.”

“Yeah. It was… it wasn’t a good day.” She took another swig of whatever alcohol was in her flask. Connie had never seen her look so tired. “All of ‘em were too young. It should never have gone tits-up the way it did, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that anything can go wrong, any-fucking-time.”

“Are… are they sure, about Mass? Isn’t it possible zir suit was just damaged, or— or—” Connie started, but the ideas ended there. Nails picked sharper at the scar tissue, fresh pricks of pain sparking where they began to break the skin. Connie forced her hand to lay flat against her thigh.

With yet another sigh, Virginia sat up and leaned forward on her knees. “Look, CT, I’ll be the first person to advocate for double-checking on these things, you know that, but ze’s gone. If ze didn’t die when the readout said ze did, then by now… it’s been days.”

“But you survived two _weeks_ in enemy territory, and that was the Covenant, not just some Innies.”

“My survival was a fluke, CT. And if anything, Innies can sometimes be worse,” Virginia said, firmly. “Covvies hate all of humanity pretty much indiscriminately. Innies hate the UNSC more. Odds aren’t in zir favour, I’m sorry.”

Connie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from retorting. Virginia was right, though perhaps not for the reasons she thought she was.

The unease had returned with a vengeance, twisting Connie’s gut into knots. Half of the truth was in the open air, but the other half sat uncomfortably beneath her skin. Those tendrils of grief and fear wormed their way back around her chest and _squeezed_ , threatening to choke her.

“No,” she said, “it’s okay. I just… I had no idea.”

“You’ve had your own shit to deal with. Alpha Squad came back with more than a couple casualties themselves, I heard.”

“We did. And I did have a concussion,” Connie said. “And broken ribs.”

“Then that’s all the excuse you need to not know, CT,” Virginia said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Look, don’t beat yourself up about it; there’s nothing any of us could’ve done. This happens, in a war like this. Never sucks any less, but we have no choice but to just keep going.”

“I know,” Connie said. “Thanks, Virginia. And I’m sorry, I know how much losing another squadmate must hurt for you.”

Virginia smiled, sadly. “It hurts for everyone, but… thank you. Sorry you had to find out this way.”

Connie shrugged, despite the nausea still swirling around her stomach. “There are worse ways. Better from you now than a faceless list when I realised ze never came to our sessions again. That would have stung.”

She had to look like she cared _just_ enough not to be a callous monster, but nothing more. Keeping up appearances.

As she left the rec room, she pulled her hood up over her head to hide the tears rolling down her cheeks.

Connie let herself cry for five minutes, before she decided she had to focus.

(That she had already reached a point where she could swallow her grief on demand should, perhaps, have concerned her more than it did at the time.)

Mass’s death cast recent events in a new light. A bright, glaring spotlight over the memories from the freeway, memories which she could no longer ignore or dismiss outright. A pistol aimed directly at her head from point-blank range that, had the trigger been pulled, would have killed her instantly. Quick and clean, the truth masked by the chaos of the crash and the hail of bullets that could so easily have gotten lucky.

Who would ever suspect that one of their team would deliberately commit friendly fire? Who would ever suspect that the Project had _assassinated_ one of their own agents?

Accepting that what she had seen was real was the first step in understanding everything else.

Connie wiped her eyes and, perched on the edge of the observation deck with her feet dangling over into the abyss, she pulled her spine straight. With her data-pad disconnected from the network, she pulled up a note document and started typing out her thoughts in a disjointed stream of consciousness.

Mass was not a field agent. Zir place in the Project had always revolved around supporting from the side-lines. The closest ze had typically come to the field was sitting in the Pelican, providing the equivalent of tech support. It was how ze and Alaska had become such good friends; they’d had countless hours waiting on the team to talk.

Ze worked best from a distance. Zir viruses and programs were instrumental in many missions, but ze was not a fighter. Yes, Mass had enough combat experience to get by, but a _solo mission?_

Connie didn’t blame Virginia or the others for not questioning it, but it was a red flag if she’d ever seen one.

Following the thought through to its logical conclusion came with the realisation that the teams on the Sarcophagus mission were just as deliberately mis-assigned. Connie could never have been on Team A; on Team A, it would have been impossible to isolate her long enough to kill her without attracting attention or sabotaging the mission irreparably. Team B could fail and the codes still be recovered, but if Team A failed, there would have been no second chance.

The Director needed the mission to succeed just as much as he needed the potential security risks eliminated.

Because that’s what Connie and Mass were: security risks.

Mass may not have been a hacker by trade, but ze had been forced to learn such skills to work alongside Connie and to step in for her. Ze was also a skilled programmer, capable of constructing programs that Connie herself couldn’t; programs that zir could have used to do exactly what Connie had been doing. Ze had been designing similar things for the Project for _years_.

Add in zir experience with AI and Command must have seen a few red flags of its own.

The two Delta agents who had died in the so-called ‘rescue’ attempt were part of a smokescreen to make the mission’s failure seem more real. Collateral damage. As the bottom two agents on the leaderboard, their lives mattered little to the Director. Nevermind the lives of the people left behind to mourn.

Connie had no doubt that, once she had access to the systems again, she would find a similar Level 0 Directive attached to Command’s files on the failed ‘mission’.

She also had no doubt that it was her fault.

 _Her_ transmissions had caught the eye of Command. _She_ had dragged Mass into it. _She_ had put her desire for help above the potential risk to Mass’s life.

Mass was dead and ze was dead because of Connie.

 _And for what?_ Connie thought, as she erased her ramblings and wiped her eyes again. Could she continue her work, now, when Command knew that somebody was onto them and had been bold enough to try and eliminate the threat? Could she find the equipment she needed to, should she decide the risk was worth it?

Or did it end here, and Mass had died for nothing?

If, _if_ she could find a computer to use, one that the Project didn’t know about, then maybe, just maybe, she could create her own smokescreen. Mass’s death could serve a purpose (though the phrase, the _idea_ , made her stomach knot with guilt). If she could mask her transmissions, if she could keep activity _hidden_ this time…

Maybe they’d think it had all been Mass.

Maybe they’d let her live.

Connie startled herself with a hysterical laugh. She fell back against the deck, heels of her palms pressed into her eyes. Equally hysterical sobs shook her body, the pitiful sound echoing around the empty room.

There were thoughts a person should never have to have.

It was another five minutes before she had herself under control again. Laid on her back, her arms out either side of her, she took a deep breath and centred her thoughts.

Before she could do anything else, she needed a computer.

Requesting one from Command was obviously out of the question, the subsequent problem being that they had control over all computer equipment on the ship. Personal technology carried over from their old lives was strictly forbidden—there was a reason she’d had to sneak in something as simple as a holographic photo disc like it was contraband. That proved one thing: people didn’t always follow the rules. There could be other PCs on the ship, not tied to Command’s supply. The question was _where?_

Mass’s voice brought the answer, an innocuous moment brought back to the forefront of her mind.

 _“Command’s PCs are just so… clunky, and they don’t let you change the settings_ , _”_ ze had said, one unremarkable day in months gone by. _“I much prefer my own. I have everything set up on there just as I like it. And it’s not on the network, so_ you _can’t go snooping around._ ”

That had sparked another argument, one of hundreds they’d had over the time they’d worked together. They all seemed so silly, now.

Shaking the thought away, Connie focused on the information. Mass had a PC somewhere on the ship. Zir room?

Breaking the door code wouldn’t be hard.

Connie mentally slapped herself. No, that would draw attention. If she was going to get into that room, she couldn’t break in. She had to do it the old-fashioned way: asking.

She waited until Beta Squad’s standard dinner slot ended to approach.

The screen on the door read ‘Alaska & Massachusetts’ even days after zir death. Connie rapped her knuckles against the door and stood there, eyeing the keypad, until the door slid open and Alaska stood before her. He looked ten times more frazzled than he usually did, which given his tendency towards paranoia was quite frazzled indeed.

He looked at Connie with a certain wariness. “CT? What’re you doing here? You don’t live in this hallway anymore.”

“I heard about Mass,” Connie said, the sympathy in her voice genuine as could be. “I’m sorry, Alaska. I knew you two were good friends.”

“We were,” he said, shifting on his feet. “You weren’t.”

“No, we… we weren’t.” Though perhaps they could have been. “I guess it’s obvious this isn’t just a visit to pass on my condolences. We were working on a few things and I know ze kept a lot of zir work on a flash drive, but Command hasn’t turned it over to me, so I can only assume they didn’t find it. Do you mind if I come in and take a look around for it? I need access to that work, or Command is going to have my head on a stick.”

Alaska’s wariness ramped up a notch, his eyes narrowed. “Are you even back at work yet? You were injured.”

“I’m starting to do some computer-based work again. The war doesn’t stop because I broke a few ribs,” she said and again, it wasn’t a _lie._ None of it was strictly a lie. Not that a technicality made her feel any better about it. “It’ll only take a minute.”

“…fine,” he said, stepping aside. “A minute. Most of zir stuff is gone anyway. They cleared it out a little too fast to be normal.”

It wasn’t paranoia when it was the truth.

Mass’s side of the room was all but empty. With Alaska’s eyes boring into her back, Connie searched everywhere she could think of. Under the mattress; under the bed frame; under the side table—every surface, every nook, every little place that Connie could think of to hide a PC and some places she couldn’t, just to keep up appearances. A flash drive was smaller than a PC, after all.

She searched until all that was left was to check Alaska’s side of the room, but he never took his eyes off her. Another pass over Mass’s side bought her some time, but it didn’t solve her problem.

No, it was solved by Illinois’ voice from outside, calling for Alaska’s attention.

“…I’ll be right back,” Alaska said, reluctance dripping off every syllable.

He stepped outside and Connie took her chance.

There was plenty that Alaska was hiding, but she didn’t care about his personal knick-knacks and illicit photo discs and personal data-pad. What she cared about was the PC she found attached to the underside of his bed that, when she pulled it free, was labelled with the name ‘Jyoti’.

Massachusetts’ name.

Connie tucked the PC into her waistband and adjusted her shirt and chest to conceal its outline. She made it to the door just as Alaska returned, Illinois waving at Connie before he disappeared around the corner.

“No luck,” Connie said with a shrug, one arm around her torso to hold the PC in place. To an outsider, it should have just looked like she was holding her ribs. “Thanks for letting me look. I guess I’ll have to figure something else out. And again, I’m sorry about Mass. I really am.”

“Yeah,” Alaska sighed. “Me too.”

Connie swallowed, then left him there in the doorway. Hopefully, if he knew about the PC, he’d assume Command had taken it. Hopefully.

She returned to the observation deck and stowed the PC in the vent for later.

There was a jump coming up. She’d have time to look at it then.

Only two days later, they were in slipspace.

The atmosphere on the _Invention_ had been sombre, in those two days; too many deaths and too many injuries in too short a time did that to a unit. Beta, Gamma and Delta Squads went into cryosleep with recent events fresh in their minds whilst Alpha stayed awake, fully aware that one of their teammates was still holed up in medical, awaiting surgery that couldn’t be delayed for the jump.

Maine would be held in medical for the duration of their journey, surrounded by medics who would usually have been asleep. No visits were permitted, but Connie had already made plans to break Wash in. It was the least she could do, after everything.

“You’re going to be the first people on this ship to ever break _into_ the fuckin’ infirmary,” South had said, when Connie shared her plan.

“Not true,” Connie had said, poking her on the nose. “York once broke in to break Carolina out.”

South had rolled her eyes. “Of course he fuckin’ did.”

The schedule was as rigorous as it had always been. Armour unit training was supplemented by an assignment of preparatory ‘coursework’ on AI, which they were expected to use their time off the floor studying. That in itself was useful; the work clarified a few basic questions Connie had about Smart AI and their core functions. What was _not_ useful, however, was how it monopolized her free time.

Connie barely had a moment to breathe in the first few days, let alone a moment to sneak off and start setting up Mass’s computer. In the end, she had set an internal alarm to pull herself away from another night sleeping beside her girlfriend. Or rather, nights. Plural.

One such night, she was sat on the edge of the bed, fighting to turn her shirt the right way out, when an arm looped around her stomach and a face pressed into the dip of her spine.

“Mm. Where you going?” South mumbled. Connie felt her face scrunch against her back, when the shirt hem landed on her cheek. “S’late.”

Connie’s face fell. Pulling her shirt down at the front, she gently eased South’s arm away and leant down to kiss her knuckles. “Can’t sleep. I’m going to take a walk, okay?”

“Mm. ‘Kay. Don’t be…” South yawned, “…long.”

“I’ll try not to be,” Connie said, turning to kiss her forehead. “Go to sleep, South. I’ll be back soon.”

Lying was starting to get easier with practice, but Connie almost wished it wouldn’t.

Mass’s laptop was covered in stickers and scuff marks, signs of a life before the Project and of a personality that Connie had never really gotten to know.

Connie ran her fingertips over the old vinyl, the curled edges where stickers had begun to pull loose. One looked like it was a logo for a band, glitchy text that spelled out ‘Mindless Network’. Another like it came from somewhere called the _Ganesan University_ , class of 2541. Yet another was zir name, spelled out in Latin and Hindi characters, vibrant purple. A worn-out genderqueer flag. A character from a show Connie didn’t recognise. Flowers.

Blinking back the pressure building behind her eyes, Connie opened the lid.

Cracking into the PC didn’t take long, but it felt… wrong. It felt worse when zir desktop filled the screen in front of her and Connie was greeted with a photograph of Mass, one zir friend’s arms thrown around zir shoulders to drag zir into the frame.

Mass looked younger and ze was laughing, despite zir apparent attempts to escape zir friend’s grasp.

Connie had just mustered the will to pull her eyes away when a slideshow began and the image faded into another, then another, then…

Mass in zir graduation robes, looking proud between zir parents. Mass in zir navy uniform, stood perfectly straight amongst the _UNSC Enigma’s_ accompaniment. Mass with a spry-looking ferret wrapped around zir neck, dangling like some particularly lively feather boa. Mass at a concert with a friend, mouth open as ze sung along. Mass in a garden with a younger sibling, running from the spray of a hose.

A small series of photos of Mass and Alaska, in the process of falling to the ground mid-spar, laughing. Mass rolling zir eyes at the taker of a group photograph, the only time ze had ever come to a space station’s bar with Beta squad.

Connie was in that one, leaning against Wash’s side with a colourful drink in her hand.

Had that really been less than two years ago?

The pictures kept cycling. Mass wasn’t in every image; there were photos of friends and places and that ferret scattered in-between. Photos from the Project that shouldn’t strictly have existed, but that people had taken anyway. Photos of Mass’s _life,_ coloured vibrantly by the kind of joy Connie had never seen Mass display first-hand. All because of some ridiculous conflict that neither of them was willing to let go.

Connie forced herself to look away.

Zir desktop was covered in notes. Personal, scattered thoughts that Connie wouldn’t even have dreamt of opening, until her eyes scanned over one simply titled ‘CT’.

Brow furrowed, Connie opened the file to find an audio recording, dated the day after she’d first approached zir.

It took her a full minute to gather the nerve to hit ‘play’.

“ _CT is… a confounding person,_ ” zir voice said, clear but quiet. “ _I have no idea what I expected when she said she wanted to talk to me, but it wasn’t to find out that she has actual evidence to back up one of her seemingly inane spurts of questions for once. Not that I’ve seen the evidence, but…_ ”

Ze sighed and there was the sound of fingernails rapping against a surface.

“ _She’s never been afraid to ask her questions aloud before. Never. She’s outspoken as anything, no matter how annoying it gets. So being cryptic like that, hiding that screen from the cameras… well, there’s a reason I’m recording this where I am. No cameras in our rooms and I swept for audio bugs. My band is in the bathroom beeping up a storm._ ”

Connie eyed her own band.

“ _This is… I don’t know what it is. I’m inclined to trust her, surprising anyone who knows us. She seemed serious and if she turned to me, she’s desperate, not paranoid. She knows about Wren, because of course she does. If this has something to do with AI like she claims…_ ” ze sighed, and there was a faint thud. “ _Maybe I can do some good. Even if I have to join leagues with a hacker.”_

There was a little laugh, and the file ended there.

Another file titled ‘contact?’ seemed much the same.

“ _So now CT has a contact. What does that mean, exactly? What are we getting ourselves into? Oh, look at that, it’s ‘we’ now. It’s been days and I already feel like we’re—_ I’m _in too deep. Wren was… different. That was a matter of life and death in the most imminent sense. Though, isn’t this? If they killed the Triplets… I was worried they’d killed her, today. That should say something, shouldn’t it?_ ” Ze groaned. “ _We’ve never much got on, but I don’t want her to die. I have to help._ ”

Another, one dated the morning of zir death, titled ‘mission’.

“ _Alaska and CT’s paranoia must be rubbing off on me._ ” Cloth shuffled around in the background. “ _Everything in me is screaming that I should not go on this assignment, but what choice do I have? It’s a normal assignment. There shouldn’t even be any fighting. Perhaps it’s weird that Alaska isn’t assigned as my pilot, but it’s not the first time. Alaska’s just worrying. He does that a lot._ ”

Zir band gave its standard warning beep; fifteen minutes until ze had to be somewhere else.

“ _I’m meeting CT in a couple of days. There’s that to look ahead to. I did a little digging of my own yesterday; perhaps I can even come prepared._ ” A pause. “ _If this bad feeling turns out to be more than just a feeling…_ ”

Ten seconds of silence were followed by a sigh. “ _Let’s not think like that._ ”

Hours later, ze was dead.

Connie pressed her palms into her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. It was her fault. Mass’s death was all _Connie’s_ fault, for playing with things she didn’t understand.

Fingers curling against her forehead, her nails scraping lines across her skin, she gritted her teeth. _Focus, CT. Focus. You can’t do anything if you don’t focus_. _Be CT, not Connie, and_ focus.

CT opened her eyes.

One way or another, she was going to stand by that trust Mass had placed in her.

Connecting the PC to the network during the jump would have outed her the instant Command woke up at the end of the jump. They’d see the new access point in the system and know exactly when it appeared. As the only one awake with the skills needed to falsify the connection credentials, they’d have thrown her out the airlock before she had a chance to protest.

There were two courses of action CT was able to take on those nights she left the softer moniker in her room and set herself to work. One, constructing the fake credentials in advance, building them up until they were beyond reproach to anyone’s eyes but her own. Two, finding a way to mask her transmissions off the ship that did more than scramble their signal so they couldn’t pinpoint where on the ship it was coming from.

The first was easy. CT chipped away at it whenever she could. The second was more complex, and the answer came to her only when she stumbled across a recent draft of TURNCOAT’s code on Mass’s hard drive.

Ignoring the pang of guilt in her chest, she had been prepared to simply set it aside. They had almost finished it, at last; despite Connie constantly putting off her work on it, Mass had made great strides. The program would never be implemented, now that Mass was dead; it had been zir brainchild, not Connie’s. However, as she turned her attention back to other things, an idea began to turn over and over in the back of her mind.

TURNCOAT was all about masking your signal so that it appeared to belong to someone else. Its intended application had been small scale, sure, but theoretically… with a few adjustments…

She could mask her transmissions the same way, make any transmission’s origin and endpoint appear completely innocuous. As if the transmissions were coming from Command themself, mixed in with all their other day-to-day communications.

Mass had done most of the work for her. It took time, multiple hours over the course of two nights, but CT was able to reconstruct the program to suit her needs.

(And if it took longer than it should have, then it was because Connie couldn’t bring herself to finish the code in anything but Mass’s style.)

CT wouldn’t get caught out, not like she had before. She couldn’t afford to be. Project Freelancer had shown its hand and she would work around it. Mass would be her mask; zir death would hopefully throw Command off her trail before they could strike out at her again.

She would be invaluable. The agent who asked too many questions, but got her work done. Not an agent they needed to eliminate.

She’d be that, until she wasn’t. Until this was over.

Or until they saw through the façade.

Whichever came first.

Connie slipped back into bed with her girlfriend that night and the tension fell away, little by little. She listened to the soft thrum of South’s heartbeat and let it lull her to sleep, where she dreamed of drowning.

In the morning, she smiled at South when she asked her how she’d slept and told her ‘well’.

Even though South didn’t question it, she didn’t seem totally convinced.

Things began to change quickly at the Project, after the jump.

The classroom sessions that had begun to drop off their schedules with the increasing pressure reappeared, cutting chunks out of their training regimens to teach the agents of Alpha squad about AI. The coursework had been just the beginning. Alpha Squad was to learn all the ins and outs of Artificial Intelligence. They were to—

“—become familiar with the origins, functions and upkeep of the Artificial Intelligence units which will become your most valuable assets on the field of battle. All Agents—”

—were expected to know how to transfer an AI from one host to another; how to monitor an AI’s behaviour for signs of glitches; and all sorts of other standard upkeep that applied to any other piece of equipment. The differentiating factor being that AI, unlike other equipment, were capable of talking back.

In some ways, that was useful. Unlike a faulty gun, the AI could report its own issues. In others…

“Imagine listening to someone have an argument with a computer program,” South snorted, after class one day. “That’s going to be our reality. York hasn’t met a single person he hasn’t pissed off. If these AI are based on human brains, they’re going to be just as predisposed to hate him.”

“Hey, I resent that!” York interjected. “I never pissed off my mother. I was a total momma’s boy.”

“Well, _that_ surprises no one,” Wash said, dryly. York flashed him a grin.

Their first lesson had been about their specialised neural implants, which they had received upon acceptance to the program, explaining the ways in which the AI interfaced with their brains through it. To Connie, it all sounded very invasive; if things worked as they were intended, there would be a constant presence in your mind, piggybacking off your neural pathways. The AI’s voice would be in your mind, and yours in its.

Knowing that the Director was running experiments on these things didn’t inspire any confidence in how safe such a partnership would be in practice.

The next couple of classes had turned their focus onto the basics of AI creation and their functions. They were expected to answer questions based on the coursework they had already done and take notes on the new information that followed. Connie paid close attention to every word; this would be important, that much she knew. In what way, exactly, remained to be seen.

“Previously,” the Director said, pacing slowly at the front of the classroom, “it was impossible to create a Smart AI from a living, human mind; to do so would cause the death of the mind in question. Cognitive impression modelling has always been an inherently deconstructive process. However,” he stopped in front of the podium, “the type of Smart AI we will be working with are unique. As predicted in my doctoral thesis, it is possible to create a fully functioning Smart AI from a living brain.”

“But I thought you just said that doing so was impossible?” Connie said, her arm up like a child in school.

The Director glowered at her. Connie just tilted her head.

Ask enough innocent, if annoying, questions and it might obscure those that weren’t so innocent.

“Yes, Agent Connecticut. Under the _previous_ standard, such a thing was impossible. However, by instead building a cognitive matrix from a specialised real-time brain scan, not from the brain itself, equivalent results can be achieved without the destruction of the donor brain. Such AI are, obviously, as yet untested.”

And, obviously, it was Project Freelancer’s job to test them.

“But sir, if they’re untested, then how do we know that using them will be safe?” Connie asked, arm back in the air.

“You do not need to raise your hand, Agent Connecticut. There is an indicator for you to press on your desk,” the Counselor said. Connie pointedly kept her arm raised.

“The UNSC has approved their use, that is all the assurance you should need. Regardless, the AI which you will all be using will be fragments, which are unlikely to cause any unnecessary strain due to their size,” the Director said, the end of the sentence snappy, sharp.

Connie filed the information away for later, but she didn’t push her luck with another question.

What, exactly, was an AI ‘fragment’?

The first AI arrived right on schedule.

Not long before their distribution, the two AIs’ files appeared at the document clearance level CT had given her false credentials, with all but the most basic of information about them further encrypted. All that CT could access was their names; assigned agents; an associated symbol; and what appeared to be a secondary title of some sort.

CT wasn’t surprised. She had adjusted her spoofed profile since her last dive into the systems and had access to files she previously hadn’t, but she remained reluctant to push her luck. So soon after Mass’s death, Command was likely to still be on high alert. The profile was limited, but it was safe. It was a starting point.

Their names were Delta and Sigma. Greek letters, though not in sequential order. They had been assigned to Agents York and Carolina, respectively. Their secondary titles, contained neatly in a box beneath a blanked out heading, designated them ‘Logic’ and ‘Ambition/Creativity’.

Barebones information, at best.

There were no images of the AI attached. There was no service code. There was no date of acquisition; no psychological data about the chosen partnerships; _nothing_. All such information would be hidden beneath the encryption that left the files as nothing but chunks of censored text. An encryption that CT had no doubt she could break, but one that she was not yet willing to.

So, she worked with what she had.

Delta’s file was created before Sigma’s, implying that Delta’s acquisition had come _first_ ; however, she had no access to exact dates or times. ‘Logic’ and ‘Ambition/Creativity’ could have referred to the AI’s strengths or purpose, though that told her very little at such an early stage.

Perhaps most telling was that Command had assigned them to the agents ranked second and third on the board. If the Director was to be believed, which he wasn’t, the AI were to be assigned solely on their compatibility with a particular agent. Whilst it was theoretically possible that the first two AI were perfectly suited to the agents who just so happened to top the board, it was unlikely. No, it was much more likely that the AI were being assigned based on rank first, compatibility second.

That did, however, raise questions about Texas.

Agent Texas hadn’t been seen since the Sarcophagus mission. Just as she had after the three-vs-one, she had disappeared. She made no appearance during the slipspace jump during which she should have been awake, like the rest of Alpha. The new number one was a stranger, a shadow, out of sight and out of line.

Had they skipped over her for an AI? Or was there another file somewhere that CT simply didn’t have access to?

With how the Director treated Texas, CT leaned towards the latter.

Sigma and Delta were implanted into their agents within days of this discovery. Carolina and York went into surgery early that morning and emerged unconscious, being swarmed by medics. These were the first such implantations ever performed. Whilst the AI could be easily removed (or ‘pulled’, as the classes had taught them) there was no such thing as too careful, in such a situation.

Tied up in sessions for the majority of the day, Connie got updates from Wash or South—whichever could get away at the time to keep an eye on proceedings. When they awoke, the gaggle of medics ran them through checklist after checklist, until even York’s friendly demeanour began to crack with frustration. Something that, as Wash assured Connie later, was rather amusing to watch.

York successfully communicated with his AI first, if only by a few minutes, whilst Carolina’s had projected first, apparently wishing to talk to her ‘face to face’. Delta followed suit, though not before York explained to him why, exactly, he should do so.

Delta projected in a simplified version of the basic model armour, bright green and with his hands clasped in front of him. Sigma projected in a uniform much like the Project’s formal dress, bright orange and consumed by flames.

“That tracks,” Connie had found herself saying when she finally saw them in person, earning a raised eyebrow off Wash. She didn’t elaborate.

It came as no surprise to her that the flashier of the two, the more _creative_ of the two, had pushed to take to the training floor first. Carolina was as eager as her AI to test what he could do and, as soon as she was cleared by the medics, a display session was organised for the next day.

As the first AI-Agent partnership to test their raw capabilities, they attracted quite a crowd.

Connie was huddled in the observation bay next to South, whose shoulders were tense enough to support the weight of a Warthog—tension that eased only slightly when Connie bumped up against her side and rested a hand over hers. Around them, the rest of Alpha (minus Texas, as always) and an assortment of Beta agents crowded in, some of them with beeping bands.

Carolina stood in the middle of the training floor, running her armour through a variety of complex colourations. The orange light of Sigma hovered over her shoulder, though his figure was indistinct from a distance.

Over in the private viewing bay connected to the bridge, the shadow of the Director stood straight as his voice came through the speakers. “ _Begin the test._ ”

Her armour snapped back to teal as the floor began to change.

The starting beep sounded and Carolina became a blur.

The modular obstacles unfolded in front of her. Carolina ran through the ever-changing, unpredictable course with perfect accuracy and unbelievable speed, her unit kicking in and out at just the right moments. Sigma was invisible, yet ever-present in the way her speed adjusted at her whim, making minute changes as she turned sharp corners, made sudden jumps and zipped through section after section.

It was the kind of precision control she was simply not capable of on her own. Carolina had become very skilled at using her unit, but the human mind was only able to think so quickly, do so many things at once. An AI had much higher limits.

Without an AI, Carolina was at the top of her game. With one, she rose above it.

Carolina skidded to a perfect stop just before the timer crossed the half-way mark.

“ _F.I.L.S.S., increase course complexity. Again, Agent Carolina._ ”

She ran it again. Pieces of the course swapped out faster and Carolina’s speed, her reaction times, increased to match. The other agents watched as she vaulted over a gap the width of the floor and half the height with no issue; as she ran up a wall without her mag boots ever powering on; as she finished the more complex course only milliseconds later than she did the last.

“Holy _shit!_ ” Wash exclaimed somewhere down the row, as similar chatter filled the room. “ _That_ was amazing.”

“Hate to admit it, but that was pretty fucking cool,” South said, begrudging as it was. “And she’s got one of the most boring fucking units, too. Fuck knows how impressive some of the crazier shit will be with an AI if _that’s_ the kinda fuckery we’re looking at.”

“Yeah,” Connie said, fingers drumming against the ledge. “Going by that display, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what these units can do. Maybe that hard-light bending trick of yours could be viable.”

“If I ever fucking get one, then fuck yeah it could.”

Mere weeks ago, the concept would have excited Connie. Even now, she couldn’t help but imagine the ways in which an AI would have improved her own unit’s functionality, the ways that had been laid out in the documentation that had first led her to the existence of AI in the Project. With all new knowledge considered, however, the excitement was replaced with a less pleasant kind of anticipation.

Carolina was bouncing on her tiptoes as she pulled off her helmet, her expression wild with exhilaration and her hair flattened to her face by sweat. Shaking out her hair and re-tying it into a swift braid, she talked to the bright figure of Sigma who had once again projected above her shoulder.

When she pulled the helmet back on, she turned towards the Director. Within thirty seconds, she was running the course a third time, the complexity level increased again.

Later, when the agents were all gathered in the locker room and Carolina’s eyes were still a little wild with the adrenaline pumping through her system, she told them how, “—that was a rush like nothing I’ve ever felt before, or, at least nothing that I came away from standing upright,” but how, “having a voice in my head when I’m trying to fight is something I have to get used to,” and how, “the training floor is a lot different than an actual fight. I hope we get given a proper chance to test them in something a little less… sterile.”

She got her chance a few days later, when a new round of simulations came up in the rotation.

The _Invention_ had stopped in a star system that served as a home base, of sorts; a small system with a single habitable tide-locked planet that housed recruitment evaluation facilities, additional off-ship storage and, most importantly, their largest collection of simulation bases.

Multiple agents were sent down, but the two simulations that concerned Connie were those of York and Carolina.

York’s was simple enough; he would be facing Washington at Outpost 31 – Danger Canyon. It was, overall, an unremarkable affair that proved Delta’s usefulness as a cover for York’s left side. He also came back telling tales of Wash getting run over by a group of Reds, but that was hardly anything new.

Carolina’s, however… the Director was fanning the flames of conflict between Texas and Carolina without remorse or hesitation. Assigned to an outpost called Desert Gulch, the simulation was simple, so when Carolina returned to the ship early, the first assumption had been that it had simply ended quickly.

“Texas won on a technicality,” she said, as she slipped Sigma’s chip into its protective case and let her hair fall back over her empty implant. Connie sat across from her in the locker room, quietly listening as North asked Carolina how it went. “We had to cut it short. One of the Blues shot one of the Reds point blank in the face and had some kind of mental breakdown. Seemed like they knew each other.”

Such nonchalant talk about the needless deaths in simulations had become normal.

Still, Connie flinched.

They didn’t have long to get used to the AI being around before they were pulled for maintenance, during the _Invention’s_ next supply stop.

Not that Connie had seen much of them, anyway. She caught glimpses of Delta most often, when York swung by the Intelligence Centre or during the few social gatherings Alpha managed to pull together. He seemed to be the opposite of everything that his host was: calm, formal, logical, and, initially, resistant to spend much time out around the others.

Sigma, on the other hand, projected at every opportunity—he simply wasn’t given many. Carolina mostly kept him pulled when they weren’t training and, even then, Connie had caught her training late at night with no sign of Sigma anywhere. She didn’t want to rely on him, Carolina told them at first. Something just wasn’t _clicking_ , she added later.

It was the first real supply stop they’d made since before Luminous-VI. The _Invention_ docked at _Minerva Station_ , an expansive space station with a research wing, training platform, and facilitated equipped to play host to UNSC officials from all over occupied space.

Though the stop itself would last four days, their time off the ship would be limited to less than half that. They were expected back at the ship on the second day to prepare ahead of a surprise visit by members of the UNSC. An inspection, in substance if not in name.

There was just enough time to stock up on commissary goods and have a much smaller gathering, with alcohol, than all those months ago on the _Spire_. Carolina was in no mood for festivities and had disappeared to the training platform earlier in the day. Washington had returned to the ship early, as Maine was due for another surgery. Gamma Squad was mourning the loss of two of its agents at the simulation bases and Beta Squad was there, but on edge.

York did his best to rally the remaining agents’ spirits, but with the inspection hanging over their heads, it felt even less like leave than it usually did.

For once, no one was hungover the next morning. Due back on the ship by midday, no one could afford to be.

A debriefing not unlike those before their missions told the agents all they needed to know about the upcoming visit. Agents were expected to represent Project Freelancer at its best; they were to wear formal uniform or their armour at all times for the duration of the inspection. Those who worked in specific areas of the ship were to talk the visitors through their functions. They would answer the officials’ questions, but only within the limits of Level 2 Clearance—that is, nothing about the AI. Any such questions were to be referred up to Command.

Only the obedience of the agents would keep the knowledge of the multiple AI units the Director should not have had from reaching the UNSC’s ears. Unfortunately, such obedience was reliable from everyone for whom it mattered the most.

The three UNSC officials, only one of which appeared to wear a rank, boarded the ship on the third morning of the stop. Connie didn’t make the cut for the welcome wagon laid out in front of them, but the agents’ group communication channels were buzzing with activity. Within five minutes of their arrival, she knew almost everything but their names. One of them was apparently bald. For some reason unknown to Connie and quite possibly the universe itself, that was worthy of repeated mentions.

Display matches were hosted on the training floor, primarily unit demonstrations and sparring. Connie was enlisted to show off what her holograms could do. Carolina ran literal circles around the twins, who in turn put up an impressive display with their Bubble Shields in their own unique styles. Beta squad put on a show with their flashier units, with Louisiana teleporting from the floor to right in front of one of the officials, after someone had handed him her tether with no warning.

The best that Project Freelancer had to offer, at least, that they were able to show.

Connie fielded questions about their operations from her position in the Intelligence Centre. Mass would have been better suited for the job; ze had always been more formal, more… _disciplined_ , than Connie had. Social scripts could only get her so far when her tolerance for authority was waning more and more by the day, but she held her tongue and talked the three visitors through her job regardless.

If it hadn’t been for the kevlar between her nails and her palm, she’d have been bleeding by the time they left.

The atmosphere aboard the _Invention_ was stiff, a tense feeling that seemed to be shared by all. Almost every agent on the ship had a reason to be wary of UNSC officials such as those watching their every move. No one dared to step out of line and, even over the evening when the inspectors left, the everyday rule-bending behaviours were nowhere to be seen.

Two days of inspection couldn’t have ended soon enough.

When they did end, the change in the air was almost immediate.

For some, however, it wasn’t quite over. An assortment of the top or most respectable agents had been selected to represent Project Freelancer at a formal function aboard the _Minerva._ Those not chosen were left behind and their schedules for the latter part of the day cleared. Time off, to compensate.

“Can’t believe they sent fucking _York_ to a fucking formal party,” South said, haphazardly stripping and discarding her uniform. “That’s a disaster just waiting to happen. Carolina? Yeah, makes sense. Wyoming? Asshole’s a stuffy Bond villain, it’s perfect for him. Florida? Weird, but I’ll let it slide. North?” She snickered. “He’ll hate it, but he can do it. Hell, even those Beta squad guys will be kept in line by that Virginia chick. York, though? _York?_ ”

“I heard him asking North how to tie a tie earlier,” Connie said, rolling up onto her side. Her uniform was already folded neatly in storage. “There aren’t any ties in military formal.”

“Dickshit,” South snorted. She flopped dramatically onto the bed beside Connie, down to her sports bra and boxers, and groaned. “Thank _fuck_ that shit is over. I don’t think I coulda kept that stick up my ass any longer. I don’t know how those uppity fuckin’ assholes at the UNSC do it.”

Connie giggled, nuzzling her shoulder and kissing an old bullet scar. “They’ve had a lot of practice.”

“ _I’ve_ had a lot of practice with things up my ass, they just _live_ like that.”

“I hope you’re not implying you _actually_ had a stick up your ass the last couple days,” Connie said, the giggle turning into a laugh. “Though it’d certainly explain some of the faces you pulled when they weren’t looking.”

South grinned. “Nah, but it made you laugh, didn’t it?”

Connie’s face softened. Shuffling backwards, she gave South the room to roll up onto her side too, that purple-tipped hair falling messily across her face. Blowing the strands away, she looked at Connie with a smile.

Cupping South’s cheek, Connie said, “You did. Is it that obvious I needed to?”

“Just a bit. Know you hate guys like that,” South said. Her hand found Connie’s hip and her fingers rubbed little circles into the skin above her waistband. “Haven’t heard you laugh properly in ages, it feels like. Haven’t had as much time, I guess.”

“Yeah…”

That moment, there and then, was one of the first true moments they’d had to themselves in what could have been weeks. Nights were quiet but short-lived. Sleep had cut short many an evening they had intended to spend together. It was Connie’s fault; to get up when she could work, she had to sleep earlier and set internal alarms.

Selfish as it felt, she had never needed a moment like that more than she did then. A respite in a sea of lies and secrets, so many of them told to and withheld from the woman lying in front of her.

Her thumb brushed over South’s lips and then she was kissing her.

Connie’s hands curled into South’s hair and South made a low, pleased noise, deep in her throat, fingers sinking into the soft flesh of Connie’s butt and pulling her closer. Connie’s leg hooked around South’s hip and, with the slightest pressure, she rolled them so that South was on her back, pinned to the mattress by desperate lips and limbs alike.

Connie kissed her until she was breathless. Until she had to pull away, panting, to look at South’s flushed face and mischievous eyes, every bit an invitation.

“You want to—?”

“Fuck yeah.”

Connie pulled off her sports bra and pressed down against South, kissing her again.

Stealing windows of time just to be together, just to indulge in the other, was getting harder and harder by the day, and so they made the most of it. South gave herself over to Connie with the kind of trust Connie no longer felt she deserved, but that she honoured. The sense of control was something she needed now more than ever, and she knew that South needed the opposite just as much.

South’s pale neck was decorated with love bites, by the end, and Connie admired them, proudly, as she sat atop her, bare except for the thin sheen of sweat that covered them both. South looked up at her from one exposed eye, her arm thrown over her face, and grinned.

“Enjoying the view?”

“Always do,” Connie said, leaning down to steal a much softer, shorter kiss.

South leaned after her, as she pulled away.

Connie shuffled down until her head lay on South’s chest, her face pressed against her sternum. For the first time in a long time, everything came back into focus; time no longer felt like it was skipping from one day to the next without respite. The minutes were hours, instead of seconds.

South’s fingers combed through the long side of her hair and began idly playing with the strands. Connie exhaled, melting into the warmth of South’s body beneath her.

There were a million things she wanted to say, in that moment. Apologies, promises, excuses, _questions_ —she wanted South to know, she wanted South to _understand._

But then she remembered Mass and she thought about zir, left to die, and all but one of those things fell to pieces in her throat.

“…Mass died,” she mumbled, even those few words all but lost in the warm skin of South’s chest. Firm and familiar, it grounded her. She didn’t want to lift her head away.

“Huh?”

Sighing, Connie turned her head just slightly. “Mass died. Massachusetts, from Beta squad? Ze died, a few weeks ago now. Right after Sarcophagus.”

“Oh. Shit. Wait, I thought you didn’t _like_ Mass?” South said. Just as her voice turned upwards into a question, she dragged her fingernail around the curve of Connie’s skull right by her ear and it was all Connie could do not to melt. “You two argued all the time, right?”

“Right. I— I didn’t, I guess. Not… not really,” Connie said, tripping over her own tongue, “but we worked together a _lot_ and… I don’t know, that’s not the point. It doesn’t matter if I liked zir. Ze _died_. It’s… it’s complicated. I don’t know.”

They hadn’t got on, but they could have. Even if they couldn’t have, Mass had died because of her.

Only, she couldn’t say that, could she? She could only say ‘it’s complicated’, as if such a platitude was enough.

“Always forget what a big fuckin’ heart you have, mischief.” South’s fingers curled around the base of Connie’s skull, over the cold, impersonal metal of the implant embedded there, and gently started to massage the muscle. “Still, babe. Not sure why you’re telling me this _now._ ”

Exhaling deeply, Connie pressed her face back into her chest. “I… I guess I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

A beat.

“ _Connie_ ,” South snorted, the press of lips warming the top of Connie’s head, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a badass bitch. You’ve seen the shit I’ve survived. I’m not going any-fucking-where.”

A lump swelled in Connie’s throat.

How, exactly, could she respond to that? How does someone explain that it’s not the enemy that you’re worried about, that it’s not a stray bullet or a faulty unit or a mission gone wrong that your nightmares are made of? That it’s something much closer to home, something much quieter and more insidious?

How, when a simple act of telling someone the wrong thing at the wrong time could put a target on their back, could you ever ask them to understand?

“…I know,” she said, pressing a kiss to the side of South’s breast. “I know. Just be careful, okay? Just… just be careful.”

“Alright, mischief,” South said, taking one of Connie’s hands in hers and kissing the knuckles, “I’ll be careful.”

Connie mumbled a ‘thank you’ and closed her eyes, hiding her face back in South’s chest. The soft thrum of her heartbeat soothed any spiral before it could start. South was alive and she was here. She was safe, physically at least, so long as she didn’t know anything that would draw Command’s eye.

There was no more asking for help. No, it wasn’t safe, not now.

One way or another, Connie had to do this alone.

For everyone’s sake.


	14. Trying to Keep Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/24932925574a92fc2f32ba60520b3659/20d5002ef49f8b89-75/s640x960/72fc04718c3953ef65a668279799322eb16f50c1.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro
> 
> (this chapter comes with an added emetophobia warning)

It wasn’t long before her time spent on the observation deck began to feel routine.

Every other night or so, Connie awoke with an internal alarm in the back of her head and CT made her way to the deck, where she retrieved Mass’s PC from the vent and sat down to work. Her mornings tasted of energy supplements and regret, but she kept at it. Soon enough, she could get through the day and her training on reduced sleep with minimal issue.

She’d deal with the consequences if she lived long enough for them to matter.

Not all of those nights were spent alone. After finally telling Needles and Rat that the Project had made an attempt on her life and killed Mass, Needles had insisted on extra check-ins. CT had argued it down to only once a week, the limit of what she felt would be safe, but the company was… nice. Better than being alone, in any case.

Most of the time, anyway.

“ _Keaton was such a scrappy guy,_ ” Needles said, sat to the side of Rat. The video feed was pushed into the top corner of CT’s screen, her work taking up the rest. “ _Always getting himself into fights. Had a black eye more often than he didn’t.”_

 _“_ I remember,” CT said, and she did.

“ _That didn’t change much when we became… you know._ ” Needles gestured vaguely. “ _He was always throwing himself into close combat, taking the heat for the rest of us. Sleeves is the tank, but you’d have forgiven the people we were fighting for thinking otherwise._ ”

CT flexed her fingers and breathed deeply through her nose.

“ _He was a good leader, good friend. He always talked about you, you know. He was very proud of—_ ”

“Needles,” CT said, hands curling into fists, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, I really do, but I only have so much time to work. Please.”

Needles opened his mouth to talk, but a sharp elbow from Rat cut him off with a grunt and he sighed. “ _Sorry. It’s just… he’d have loved to see you now. Doing what you’re doing._ ”

 _Would he?_ CT wanted to say, the words caught behind her teeth. He’d have been proud, perhaps; _that_ she could believe. But would any sensible brother have _loved_ to see his sibling in such a position? Was he ever such a brother to begin with?

“Needles, I said I appreciate it, but… I can’t do what I’m doing if all you talk about is my brother,” she said, instead.

“ _She_ has _a point,_ ” Rat said, the actual rat that CT had come to know as ‘Rat 2’ squeaking in agreement from their shoulder. “ _Shut that yapping trap of yours and let us work. You’re worse than Demo, sometimes, and that’s saying something. Especially now. Losing his arm gave his mouth new power._ ”

“ _Fine_ ,” Needles said, with a barely disguised huff. He barely made it through five minutes of silence before he spoke again. “ _Are you_ sure _that you’re safe, Connie? Is there any chance they still suspect you?_ ”

“Well, they’ve had over a month now and they haven’t made another attempt on my life, so I think my odds are pretty good right now,” CT said with a shrug, pretending as if she wasn’t constantly aware of the blade that hung above her head, ready to fall at any moment. “Wyoming even had me alone in the rec room the other night. All he did was steal my gin from my hand, so unless you count that…”

“ _Be_ serious _, Connie. You could have died._ ”

“I’m very much aware of that.” CT sighed and held up her arm to show off her empty wrist. “If you’d been paying attention, you’d have noticed that my comm. band,” she said, holding it up in her other hand, “no longer starts beeping when I remove it. Rat and I have been working on adapting my old algorithms from TURNCOAT. Now, when I remove it, it can be set so it creates a new set of biometric data based on old records. Unique, but convincing. So, I can leave it in my room, and they can’t track me.”

“ _Speaking of, I don’t know if I’m in love with your code or you for writing it,_ ” Rat said, bringing a genuine smile to CT’s face for the first time that night. “ _Honestly, your code is so slick you could use it as lube._ ”

“Thank you, Rat,” she said, muffling a laugh. Setting the band down, she continued, “All of our transmissions are still disguised by TURNCOAT, too. As far as the ship’s servers know, this is a routine transmission back to the UNSC. This PC isn’t on their radar, either. There is _nothing_ they can use to trace me.”

For now. Nothing she had was infallible. There was always a chance that one day, they’d see the transmissions for what they were, but if all went well that day would never come.

“As far as they know, they eliminated their problem,” she said. Her fingernails caught at her palm. “So yes, I’m fine. Now, can we _please_ focus? Getting the band sorted was important, but there’s other things I need to run you through, and I only have so much time in a night.”

“ _Of course. I just wanted to make sure you’re safe,_ ” Needles said.

As he had almost every time they’d talked, since they’d started the regular calls.

CT rubbed her face and took a deep breath.

“Wyoming is going to receive his AI by the end of the week,” she said, pulling up the still heavily censored files on the now three AI. Delta, Sigma and Gamma. “The AI’s file appeared the other night. That makes four— sorry, _three_ AI that are known to be in circulation. I suspected Wyoming would be next; he recently reclaimed his position near the top of the board.”

CT cast a glance to the leaderboard that loomed above her. Wyoming’s performance at the function aboard the _Minerva_ and impressive training scores had been cited as the reasons for his rapid climb back from ninth to fourth, relegating CT back to ninth in the process. It was, on the surface, entirely believable. CT, however, knew better.

The AI had always been meant for him. Demoting him to ninth had been a smokescreen, just as much as it had been a punishment. The Director trusted him to take care of a Level 0 directive, he would never have stayed there for long.

“What’s curious is that the file on Gamma appears to originate from around the same time as the original two files. Between them, in fact.”

“ _So, what, they’ve had that little glowing fucker on hand for over a month?_ ” Rat asked, head cocked slightly too far to the side to look natural. Rat 2 almost seemed to mimic the motion.

“It seems so. This also confirms that Wyoming has an experimental armour unit that there’s no accessible record of. Wyoming is tied up in a _lot_ of secrets.”

“ _All the more reason to be careful, Connie_ ,” Needles said, firmly. “ _Try to find out what that unit is. I don’t want my people being surprised by something like that._ ”

CT felt his gaze on the side of her face and did her best to ignore the uncomfortable pressure.

“Like I said, I am being careful,” she said. “I’ll do my best with the unit, hopefully they’ll do a demonstration like they did with Carolina, but I’d put my money on them doing it behind closed doors.”

“ _Dammit._ ”

“What I’m still trying to figure out is what exactly these AI are, how they’re getting a hold of them in the first place. I’m going to look into something the Director has talked about in class, the new method of AI creation he invented? It’s possible he’s just… making more from brain scans, I don’t know.” CT sighed for what felt like the thousandth time that night and pressed her palms against her eyes, leaning her weight against her hands. “That’s a job for another night.”

“ _Before you go,_ ” Needles said, as CT began to close down the things she’d been working on. “ _You said four, earlier. About the AI. You corrected yourself, but…_ ”

“There might be a fourth AI,” CT said, fitting her band back onto her wrist. “I’m only speculating at this point, but… the AI have been assigned based on rank. So far, there’s been three public AI—for those in second, third and fourth. So… if I’m right, there should have been one for Texas, in first, too. There’s just no record of it.”

Needles frowned, his brow knitted tightly together.

“Before you can say it again, I’m being careful,” CT said, suppressing a yawn. “But right now, I need to go and sleep. Goodnight, Needles, Rat. I’ll talk to you soon. Hopefully I’ll have more data to pass on, next time.”

Rat waved, and CT smiled.

The call cut out and Connie slumped, her head in her hands.

Time marched on, and so did Project Freelancer.

Wyoming received Gamma and joined the ranks of the AI-partnered agents. Labelled ‘Deceit’ in his files, the AI was blue and projected a form that resembled Sigma’s, only without the fire and more of a glitched effect. He talked like an old-fashioned text-to-speech program and his movement seemed to skip frames like an ancient video.

And he liked knock-knock jokes. One such joke had supposedly been what first made him talk.

There was no public display of Wyoming’s unit. When Connie tried to bring up how weird that was, Wash did what he always did these days and dismissed it.

“His unit probably doesn’t have a testable combat application, like York’s,” he’d said, and Connie had immediately given up. Why she still asked him even the few scant, careful questions she did, she didn’t know.

She didn’t want help. She didn’t want people to get hurt. She had to remember that.

They had left the simulation bases behind. Another slipspace jump, another lead to follow. The project was preparing for another strike at a key ‘Insurrectionist’ target and Connie was swamped with work, to decrypt, sort and decipher new intel brought in from recent missions.

With Mass’s death, she was left the only intelligence agent who spent any substantial length of time in the centre. It hadn’t made her work harder; Mass had always had zir own work and, if anything, her contact with Rat had left her more equipped to break into the ‘Innies’ files than ever. No, her work was at a normal pace.

What Mass’s death _had_ done was leave the room silent. Unnaturally so.

There was no more arguing, no more faint mumbling from the next terminal over as Mass worked zir way through a problem in zir code. There were no more visits from Alaska or the quiet chatter that followed. There was only the sound of Connie’s fingers against her keys and the occasional, muffled voices coming from the bridge or the hallway outside.

It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, if she thought about it for too long. So, she didn’t.

Connie settled into her seat just as the energy supplements began to kick in. Her hands went through the motions, logging her into the system and pulling up the latest batch of intel that Command had her working on, but her mind was in other places.

She had found the Director’s thesis and his original approval from the UNSC the night before.

For once, the Director had told the entire truth about something. His doctoral thesis had laid out a new way to create Smart AI, capable of all the things the current generation of AI were capable of, without the requirement of a recently deceased human brain. His method, now proven to work, needed only a real-time brain scan from a willing participant and a new, specialised AI Matrix Compiler that was capable of building a cognitive matrix from such a scan.

At first, it had seemed like an easy answer to a complicated question: where were the extra AI coming from? However, the further she read and the more information she found, the less likely it seemed.

First of all, the brain scan was real-time and could not be stored. The data was destroyed by the process of converting it into an AI. Any subsequent AI would have to come from a new scan, which required highly specialised equipment that cost hundreds of thousands of credits to construct and maintain. Highly specialised, expensive equipment held by _ONI_ , not Project Freelancer. The creation of Smart AI was still a monitored process and, with the new AI still in the testing phase, the facilities required to construct them was not in use at all at this time.

When she had asked Needles what the chances were that the Sarcophagus had contained such equipment, he immediately insisted that it couldn’t. He still claimed ignorance on what its contents actually _were_ , but he seemed sure enough about what it wasn’t, so she hadn’t pushed it.

In the end, she was back at square one. Or, being generous, square one and a half. What was now clear was that there had only ever been one AI and that any new AI were somehow being created from it; the Director continued to refer to the AI as ‘fragments’ or ‘copies’.

Perhaps she needed to start taking those terms a little more literally.

Connie rubbed her temples and considered a second dose of supplements. She could already tell it was going to be another long day.

She was about to bury her head back in her work and blot out everything else unless her band beeped when she heard muffled arguing behind her.

Out on the bridge, stood next to the door that led to the Director’s private office and laboratory, was the ever-elusive Agent Texas.

It was the first time Connie had seen her in weeks. Whispers and rumours of her appearances around the ship had begun to fuel the gossip mill. Texas had private sessions on the training floor, according to those who had managed to sneak a glance before the viewing bays were closed off. She was sometimes spotted in the halls, moving from one place to the next. Someone had even claimed to have seen her with her helmet off, once.

No one had been brave enough to try and talk to her.

And there she was, stood mere metres away and arguing with— the air?

The glass between them muffled the words beyond recognition, but Texas was without a doubt having an animated, one-sided conversation. Tucked up where she was, she was out of sight of the rest of the bridge and, though the Intelligence Centre looked out upon the area, she would have had no view of the windows out of which Connie looked. So, unaware of the eyes on her, it wasn’t fear of discovery that made her bat away the flash of purple light that appeared in front of her. It was anger, directed at an all but invisible presence, that took the form of an armoured man.

Blink, and you’d miss it. The flash had no time to settle on a concrete shape before Texas’s fist passed through it, but the way it had begun to sculpt itself had resembled the now familiar shapes and lines of Delta.

Then, just like that, Texas stopped arguing with herself and stood still. _Unnaturally_ still. Texas didn’t shift on her feet as she waited, like anyone else would do. She didn’t idly look around, tap her fingers against her gauntlet, or fiddle with something to pass the time. As skewed as Connie’s own experience was, she knew even neurotypicals didn’t stand _that_ still.

Only when the door beside Texas opened, almost five minutes later, did she snap back to normal. The sound of the opening door and the Director’s voice broke whatever fugue state had overtaken her and she walked inside, every bit of her attitude returned.

Connie frowned. What was _that_ about?

Texas still hadn’t returned when Connie left the Intelligence Centre over an hour later.

The incident was still fresh in the back of her mind when Texas’s nameplate caught her eye, one locker over from hers.

Connie stared at it. The plate was still fresh, devoid of the scratches and scrapes that all the lockers earned over time. Now over two months since Texas had arrived, it showed no signs of such wear nor tear.

The strange display was but one piece of a thousand-piece puzzle. Texas’s too-normal personnel file; the favouritism displayed by the Director; her black-ops assignments; and her lack of presence among the agents, were the edges, surrounding a giant hole that filled in a little bit more with every rumour, every snapshot of her that Connie saw.

Reluctant as she was to confirm anything based on a scene viewed from afar, Connie knew what she saw. It was little surprise to see that Texas most likely had an AI; it had only affirmed Connie’s suspicions. The leaderboard had been designed as a tool for determining AI assignment order, of that Connie no longer had any doubt.

It did, however, raise more questions. Why was Texas, purportedly a normal ex-marine pulled into Project Freelancer like the rest of them, being held apart from the rest of the program, not only in the field but aboard the ship? What was special about her?

Nothing lay hidden beneath the surface of the personnel file; Connie had checked. If there was anything more to Texas, it was stored separately.

Connie sighed. Finding such information could end up a waste of time that she simply didn’t have.

 _Maybe the Director just has a crush!_ she thought, and immediately cringed.

She sat down on the bench in front of her locker and started to wriggle her way into her undersuit.

York and Washington were on opposite sides of the aisle and had been arguing about something or other since before she came into the room. For the most part, she had blanked it out, catching only snippets of whatever nonsense they were on about—something about the Covvies? Weapons? It wasn’t until she hopped up to pull her suit over her hips that York’s head snapped her way, as if realising she was there for the first time.

“Hey, CT—” (“Oh god.”) “—settle an argument for us, would you?”

“Depends on the argument,” she said, feigning nonchalance, sitting back down as she shrugged on the upper half of her suit. “What are you two scrapping over this time?”

“York’s trying to prove that being shot by a Covvie gun is preferable to being shot by a UNSC gun,” Wash said, face flat and arms crossed. “I’m _telling_ him that’s unequivocally false. Even Delta’s on my side, aren’t you Delta?”

“ _I would prefer not to take part in disputes between humans that have no relevance to our work,_ ” Delta said, hovering over York’s left shoulder. Today, his hologram was holding a pistol.

“It _absolutely_ has relevance,” York said. “Those Innie bastards have Plasma weapons in their arsenal. Wouldn’t you like to know which projectiles to prioritise when telling me what to dodge?”

Delta’s hologram flickered. “ _Very well. Then Agent Washington is right. Plasma weaponry has, on average, a 62.1% higher mortality rate associated with it than standard UNSC weaponry._ ”

“You were supposed to side with me, D. Not the enemy.”

“ _Agent Washington is not your enemy, Agent York._ ”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Wash said, barely hiding a smirk. York flipped him the bird. “I told you, I’m right.”

Connie laughed, her nose crinkled. “Let me guess, you two just came back from a mission?”

“A quickie—” (“Why would you call it that?)” “—yeah. In and out,” York said. “Found an old base of theirs, bunch of abandoned, refurbished Covvie guns. Gamma’s down there now, gathering it all. The uh, team, not the AI, to be clear. Man, that’s confusing.”

“I made a comment about how concerning it was to have to face down plasma from the Innies now, too, and that started this whole argument,” Wash said, kicking off his undersuit and pulling on his boxers.

“First of all, it wasn’t a comment, you became a _Wikipedia_ article in human form. Second of all,” York said, continuing before Wash could get another word in, “look at it this way: Covvie weaponry is terrifying, yeah, but at least you’re not going to die from blood loss.”

“ _What?_ ” Wash and Connie said, in perfect unison.

York waved a hand disturbingly casually, as if this were a normal topic to talk about in the locker room. Though really, all things considered, it wasn’t the weirdest or most morbid thing to come up after a mission. “It cauterizes the wound, y’know?”

“Right, because something that can burn a hole in your body is so much less terrifying just because it doesn’t make you bleed,” Wash said, his expression and his words as dry as a desert. “Have you ever _actually_ seen the front lines, York?”

Ignoring the question, York made a dismissive sound. “Well, _yeah_ , a hole in your body isn’t great, but—” (“Isn’t _great_? Really? You don’t say.”) “—at least it isn’t going to get any worse!”

Out of nowhere, a blue-armoured hand slapped down on his shoulder and York shot ramrod straight.

“I think York here has a fair point, Washington!” Florida said, unnervingly bright. He had this uniquely disturbing quality to him that seeped into every fibre of his being, from his voice, to his body language and facial expressions. The grin on his face was natural and unnatural at the same time. “A hole in your body isn’t _that_ big of a deal! _Every_ body has several holes in it! And if need be, more can always be added.”

“…right,” Wash said, blinking slowly. He was half-way through pulling on his shirt. “I suppose… that’s true.”

“Something worth keeping in mind, wouldn’t you say?”

With that, Florida gave York’s shoulder a tight squeeze and disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared, his whistling echoing from the hall.

The three agents left behind stared at each other in silence for a long, uneasy moment.

“So that was—” Connie started.

“—creepy, yeah,” Wash finished, shuddering slightly. “Where did he even come from? Did anybody hear him come in?”

“Not me,” York said. “Is anyone sure he actually exists when we’re not observing him? Or does he just burst into existence long enough to make ominous comments, then leave?”

“I mean, I’ve never seen him do anything in the field,” Wash said, with a shrug. “You could be right.”

“So, I’m not the only one who hasn’t got a clue what Florida does around here?” Connie said, taking the opportunity where she saw it. Not the most pressing of questions, perhaps, but these days she took what she could get. “I’ve never seen him on a mission roster. Not even Sarcophagus.”

“Who knows, maybe he just runs top secret assignments behind our backs, like Texas,” York said, only sounding like he was half-joking. Delta’s hologram flickered. “Though, in all seriousness, he runs assignments with Wyoming. Their missions are just kinda lowkey, far as I know.”

“At least Florida uses his locker,” Connie said. Two for the price of one. “Have either of you ever seen Texas in here?”

“Huh, now that you say that…” Wash said, only to follow it up with, “She probably just runs on a different schedule from the rest of us. All things considered.”

Connie breathed slowly through her nose.

“Right,” she said, pressing the seals around her neck closed. “All things considered.”

By the time the Project had organised the next key mission, targeting a production plant that the so-called Insurrectionists had ‘overtaken’, Connie had long-since warned her contacts about their intentions. The target, a cache of modified alien technology that far rivalled what York and Wash had found, would be long gone when their boots hit the ground.

When she had asked Needles what, exactly, his employer was doing with all of the alien technology that had quickly become a staple of their missions, he had answered only with: “ _The same thing everyone else is doing, Connie. Trying to win this war._ ”

It wasn’t a bad answer, though she sensed it was an incomplete one.

The mission was destined to fail from the start. That did not, however, mean that it would be simple or safe. Needles had made it clear that his team would stand their ground; they would not let themselves be overrun by the Freelancers, regardless of their alliance with Connie.

She couldn’t have argued. If they had stood down or retreated, it would have made it obvious that someone had warned them in advance. The absent cache came with plausible deniability. Connie had warned them that their window was narrow, so missing it was always a possibility, but she’d also reported that the plant was highly active and heavily defended. Her intel had to remain trustworthy, for the sake of her life. The risk of injury amongst her teammates was no different than any other mission, no matter how much more acutely aware of it she was. They would be fine.

(An image of Maine, their chestplate drenched with blood, flashed in her mind and she swallowed a lump in her throat.)

The objective itself was simple: ‘reclaim’ the plant and retrieve the cache of technology. Failing that, they were to flush the plant of as much of the ‘Insurrectionist infestation’ as possible and destroy the production equipment so as to prevent them from returning. A majority-Alpha team was to be backed up by Illinois and Louisiana, demolitions specialists.

It had taken all of Connie’s self-restraint during the briefing to hold back a snarky question about why they hadn’t left that job to Texas, this time around.

Connie had no issue in getting the team inside. They entered at the rear loading bay and South, with all of the enforced stealth experience under her belt, took out the grunts that manned it. No fuss, no mess; with every obstacle dead or close to it on the ground, South beckoned them forwards.

“Coast’s clear,” she said, turning into the hallway.

“Sigma, how far to the main chamber?” Carolina asked, as they followed.

Sigma’s hologram started as a flickering ember that grew into a human form, burning bright as ever, over her shoulder. “ _The primary production chamber is immediately to your left, at the next hallway intersection,_ ” he said, arms folded behind his back in a way that was somehow familiar. “ _Agent Carolina, if I may—_ ”

“Thank you, Sigma,” she said, and he disappeared. “Alright, listen up. Stealth is not your objective here. When we reach the production line, we _will_ face resistance. South, Wash, you two focus on eliminating the Insurrectionist soldiers; Illinois, Louisiana, you two follow behind and begin to lay charges. CT, I want you checking for any terminals, any information we can use. Everyone got that? Okay, sync.”

“Sync,” five voices said in unison.

The element of surprise carried them undisturbed through to the main production chamber, where the silence was shattered by rapid bursts of gunfire. The first two soldiers fell before anyone realised that they were there and by then, it was too late.

South and Wash charged ahead. SMG fire was interspersed with the quick _pop-pop-pop_ of precise rifle shots, ‘Insurrectionists’ falling left and right. Bullets dinged off the equipment, return fire glanced off armour. The odd brave soul charged right back at their attackers, only to get laid flat in seconds.

Carolina leapt to the wall and ran along it at high speed, reaching the far doorway before one of the grunts that made a run for it. One sharp kick to the head, accelerated by her unit, and he was on the ground.

Illinois and Louisiana followed in Wash and South’s wake, planting explosive charges at precise points. By the time they were done, the place would be rigged to blow so dramatically there’d be nothing left. Connie had seen the aftermath of their work before.

Connie’s job was the simplest of all. It didn’t take more than a quick scan of the room to find no active terminals; the ‘Innies’ had remotely locked down those that existed the second the Freelancers had revealed themselves. With nothing to do, Connie shadowed the others and gave some of the soldiers a more merciful end than bleeding out on the ground, where doing so was a forgone conclusion.

“Well, they know we’re fucking here now,” South said, standing atop one of the machines to survey the room. “Ask your little glowing dude where the damn cache is so we can get the fuck on with it.”

Carolina sighed. “Sigma?”

He reappeared. “ _There is one further room between our current location and the room in which the cache is held. I believe our best course of action—_ ”

“That’s enough, Sigma. Keep monitoring the situation and prepare for a fight.”

“ _Very well, Agent Carolina._ ” Once again, he vanished, dissipating in an artificial wisp of smoke.

“CT,” Carolina said, beckoning her forward.

Connie followed the unspoken order and opened the door.

A sniper round blew past her head and embedded itself in the floor behind her.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed, jumping back. Everyone ducked out of the doorway. “What the—”

“Sniper,” Wash said. “Going by the angle of that shot, he’s at a raised point somewhere in the next room.”

“No fucking shit, rookie,” South said. “You gonna tell us he has bullets, next?”

Connie elbowed her in the gut.

“Sigma, give me the rundown on the next room,” Carolina ordered.

Sigma didn’t bother to project, this time, but his voice broadcast over her helmet radio.

“ _The next chamber contains the main generators for the facility. Our assailant is likely positioned upon an overlooking platform, containing the terminals used to monitor and control power output._ ”

“How clear is their line of sight?”

“ _Assuming they are holding the projected position, they have a view of only half the room and their line of sight is disrupted by generators._ ”

“Alright, good to know. Illinois, Louisiana, you stay here and finish setting up. CT, Wash, South, we’re going to bait him into firing, then get inside and into cover. Sync?”

“Sync.”

Quick movement across the doorway baited two more shots. One more, drawn out when Carolina dashed inside with her unit, ricocheted off one of the machines behind them. Four shots.

“Now!”

They were in cover before their assailant could reload and take another shot.

“Hate to ask the obvious,” South said, her back up against one of the generators, “but how the fuck are we going to get to the other end of the room without this guy bursting our heads like pinatas?”

“Thanks for that imagery, South,” Wash said.

“You’re fuckin’ welcome.”

“I’ll use my unit and draw fire,” Carolina said. Stood at the end of one of the generators, she peered around the corner for just long enough to get a sense of the room before pulling back. A bullet whizzed past just as she returned to cover. “That will give you a chance to move up. There’s only two more generators until we’re under the platform.”

“Wait, that’s risky,” Connie said. Carolina’s head tilted down, her visor cast in shadow. “You’re fast with your unit, but a bullet can still hit you. Let me use mine, then all we sacrifice is a hologram.”

“You’re not cleared for unit use, CT,” Carolina said, sharply. “I have Sigma. We can time this just right.”

“But—”

“No buts, CT. I understand what you’re saying, but I’m making the call. On my mark, the three of you make a break for it.”

Connie bit her tongue. _Shit._

The quarters were tight. Even at Carolina’s maximum speed, something she couldn’t achieve in such a small space, there was too great a chance that the sniper (Snipes, if it was who she thought it was) would get a lucky shot. At this range, the damage such a hit would cause…

Connie had to do something.

Snipes would have had orders not to target Connie. If she used her own unit at the same time, cast a hologram to obstruct any shot that Snipes could take on Carolina, then they’d be forced not to make the shot.

She hoped.

Connie prepped her unit.

“Mark!”

Carolina shot off in a blur of motion, a streak of teal cutting through open space. If Snipes wanted to make the shot, that was their chance—but alongside the teal flashed a figure in brown, darting out from behind cover.

Connie fell against the generator three rows up, her head swimming with nausea.

“Everyone in cover?” Carolina’s voice was too loud, the words reverberated around Connie’s skull. The sharp barks of confirmation that followed were no better. “CT? Are you hit?”

“What?” Connie said, forcing her head up to look at her. Carolina stood merely a foot away. When did she—?

“Are you hit?”

“No, I’m fine,” Connie said, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat. The faintest scent of iron tickled her senses. She couldn’t let Carolina know she’d used her unit, so, pulling herself together, she dismissed the blaring alerts on her HUD, straightened her back, and tried not to think about how she couldn’t remember running to this position.

“ _Hey Boss_ ,” Wash’s voice came over the radio, “ _I found one of those bouncing guns. Looks like it fell loose whenever they were moving stuff through here. I think I can get a good angle with this, take the sniper out before they can reposition._ ”

“Just be careful you don’t send it bouncing back down to _us_ , Washington.”

“ _No promises, boss._ ”

There was a time when Connie would have laughed, at that. Instead, as she stood there suppressing the urge to vomit, all she could think about was Snipes. She didn’t even know their face, but she knew their name, now.

They were never supposed to be on opposite sides.

“CT, get to work opening that door,” Carolina said, jerking her head towards it.

A flash of green and an explosion filled the room, the floor above them shaking but not collapsing.

Connie flinched, but she did as she was told.

She was half-way through cracking the door when it opened on its own.

“That was quick,” Wash said.

“Uh, that wasn’t me,” Connie said, instinctively grabbing for her knife.

“Uh-oh.”

Wash barely dodged out of the way of the swipe of a knife, red and black armoured figures descending on them from the doorway. The woman with the kiss mark on her chest plate shadowed by the bare-armed soldier—Girlie and Sleeves, as Connie had been told.

Carolina froze. It was only for a second, maybe less, but Connie saw it.

“ _Agent Carolina,_ ” Sigma’s voice said over the radios, “ _is that not the soldier who injured Agent Maine?_ ”

“Sigma! Stay _out_ of my head and focus on doing your job!” Carolina barked, already snapping into action. “Is it just the two of them?”

As if on cue, the foe signal on their HUDs that had hovered above them shifted as someone landed on the generators.

“Guess I didn’t get them,” Wash got out, before Sleeves was swinging at his head.

“CT, get past them. South, Wash, you subdue them, I’ll deal with the sniper.”

Everyone’s status lights flashed green.

“Right on it, boss,” Connie mumbled to herself, supporting her weight on the wall. The smell of iron hadn’t gone away.

Sleeves and Girlie had the same orders: don’t attack Connie, not with intent. Getting past them would be easy, if only she felt she could move.

“ _Mischief?_ ” South said, drawing Connie’s eye to where she’d fallen into a fight with Girlie mere metres away. “ _The fuck’s wrong? Are you— whoa!_ ”

Girlie swept South off her feet. Her head ricocheted off the ground with a painful sounding _crack_ and she’d only just begun to roll when Girlie swung down, blade in her hand.

The hologram appeared between them before the conscious thought had crossed Connie’s mind.

Girlie startled and recoiled. The blade passed through the hologram before she could stop it and scraped across the floor with a piercing screech.

Adrenaline overpowered Connie’s nausea and confusion, giving her the surge of energy that she needed to cross the distance and throw another hologram at Girlie. Distracted, she didn’t see the kick coming until it landed in her gut.

South rolled up onto her feet, just in time to catch Connie as she fell.

The stench of blood was overwhelming, wet and fresh where it dribbled over her upper lip and into her mouth. The back of her throat burned with acid and it was all she could do not to vomit in her helmet. Her head pounded, her stomach swirled, her vision blurred and—

“ _—_ she used her fucking holograms—”

“—we need to get her out of here, _now—_ ”

“—be faster if I—”

“—EVAC required at the LZ behind the facility—”

—everything went black.

She came around in the Pelican, her head still aching like she’d taken a truck to the face.

The bird had yet to leave the ground. Her senses returned to her just in time to see South and Wash pull Illinois and Louisiana inside, the sound of gunfire muffled by the rear door not long after.

The explosion ripped through the air a few minutes later, when they were long gone.

Carolina had gotten her out. With her speed unit primed, she had her to safety in seconds whereas for anyone else, it would have taken minutes. It certainly explained the sheer level of nausea that continued to pervade Connie’s senses long after the initial effects of her unit use had worn off. Carolina used a cocktail of supplements to prevent adverse reactions to her top speeds, a cocktail that Connie obviously didn’t have.

“What were you _thinking?_ ” Carolina said, as she paced the bay. “These units are _dangerous._ Now more than _ever_ you should be aware of the risks.”

Holding her tongue about Carolina’s own misuse of her units before the AI assignments, Connie said, “I wasn’t thinking. I wanted to protect South, so I did.”

South wrapped her arm around her shoulders and tucked her close to her side. A glare from her silenced any further reprimands Carolina may have felt like dishing out.

Connie pressed her head into the curve of her neck, willing the world to stop spinning.

She was sitting in medical, being subjected to an assortment of tests to make sure she hadn’t given herself brain damage, when the realisation came to her.

The last time she’d used her unit like that, it had knocked her flat after only one hologram. The simulation troopers had the time to kill each other, grab the flag and run before she’d regained enough coherency to so much as stand up.

That hadn’t been the case in the factory. One use and she was able to stay (mostly) on her feet. Only the second and third activations had stunned her.

“Well, it doesn’t look like you’ve caused yourself any damage,” the doctor said, as they examined her brain scans. “Your neural implant is functioning normally and there’s no sign of injury to the brain, lucky you.”

“Even though my nose bleeds after I use it like that?” Connie said, the scent once again stirred in her memory.

“Looks like that’s more of a strain thing, at least at the moment.” The doctor tilted their head. “Have you done this before?”

“Just once. Months back, on a simulation base.”

“That isn’t in your file.”

“I never came up to medical over it. I was fine after, so…” She shrugged.

The doctor gave her the patented medic look of disapproval. “You Alpha squad agents, I swear. You’re all as bad as each other.”

“Just to make it worse…” Connie said. The doctor groaned. “Hypothetically, do you think it’s possible for someone using their unit incorrectly like this to… build up a tolerance for it, so to speak?”

“…is Agent Carolina giving you ideas?” the doctor said, eyes narrowed. Connie shrugged. “In theory. We’ve seen some evidence of it,” they coughed, “but patient confidentiality, and all that. _And_ it’s not advisable, nor permitted. So, don’t go _actually_ getting any ideas, Connecticut.”

“I won’t,” Connie lied.

The units were dangerous, but if things went wrong in the future, she’d need every possible tool at her disposal. If she could build up a tolerance, if she could teach herself to better exploit her unit’s potential without an AI…

It was something she couldn’t afford not to explore.

The doctor dismissed her with another warning that would go ignored. Debriefing was long over, and what remained of the day was cleared. Despite another dressing down from the Director for her actions and the failure of the mission, her rank remained at ninth and she remained with her squad.

On her way out of the bay, she took a small detour towards Maine’s recovery room, where they still spent all of their time—conscious, now, at least most of the time. Their final surgery was due within a week, after which the long process of recovery would really begin.

She reached their room and went to step inside, but froze in the doorway. Sat beside their bed was Carolina, holding one of their large hands in both of hers and talking to them in a way that felt intensely private and personal.

Connie stepped back.

South would be waiting for her, anyway.

Finding Carolina on the training floor the next night was no surprise. In fact, CT was relying on it.

She sat in the viewing bay watching Carolina run through training program after training program, with Sigma nowhere to be seen. Her numbers were good, they always were, and they improved with every round. Only, Carolina was there for something more than just training scores, something less tangible.

Whether she got what she wanted or not, she left the floor at 0100 sharp.

If she’d seen CT watching her, she didn’t acknowledge her. There was no visit, no shared drinks and conversation. She walked off the training floor and disappeared into the night, the only sign of her the faint sound of movement down in the locker room, not far away.

CT waited until the noises stopped. Silence draped over the area once more. She spoke quietly.

“Hey, F.I.L.S.S?” she said, fiddling with the small drive in her hand.

 _< Yes, Agent Connecticut, how may I help you?_>

F.I.L.S.S.’s voice was, mercifully, reduced in volume to match hers.

“If I use my equipment on the training floor without a direct power supply, you would be obligated to report it, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

< _Why yes, Agent Connecticut. I am responsible for all agents on the training floor and to use your experimental armour unit without power would be a great risk. I am programmed to prevent such a mishap from occurring._ >

CT chewed her lip, rolling the drive around in her fingers. _It wouldn’t be a mishap this time, F.I.L.S.S._

“Thought as much… sorry, F.I.L.S.S.”

< _Sorry for what, Agent Connecticut?_ >

CT’s only answer was to insert the drive into the terminal overlooking the training floor. On it she had built a simple program that halted some of F.I.L.S.S.’s training floor functions whilst it was in place. It was clumsy, really, constructed in too short a time, but it would do the job. F.I.L.S.S. just needed to turn a blind eye to her activities for a couple of hours.

“Hey F.I.L.S.S,” she said, “what were we just talking about?”

< _We were just talking about— oh! It appears that the memory of our conversation has been accidentally purged. I do apologise, Agent Connecticut, that is very unprofessional of me._ >

“Don’t worry about it, F.I.L.S.S,” she said, swallowing. “It wasn’t important, anyway.”

Satisfied, Connie made her way to the floor.

She didn’t jump in at the deep end. No, she started slow. First, she focused on reaffirming her sense of the way her unit worked whilst on the power supply. For all of the training they’d done with their units, she’d rarely been alone with it.

Linked to her neural implant, the holograms extended from her mind like a sixth sense or an extra, phantom limb. Utilising them was an exercise in visualisation. The most realistic, complex projections that could trick anyone came from her imagination, not from the default settings that only mimicked her current movements. She’d gotten a feel for it, over time; she knew what it did well, and where it wasn’t up to snuff. 

That was what she practiced first: visualising the actions and projecting them outwards.

After that, it was time to deactivate the power supply.

Ordinarily, the power couldn’t be disconnected from the agents’ end. The option was there, but F.I.L.S.S. would have overridden any attempt to use it unless it was an emergency, in which case she likely would have disconnected it much faster than the agent could have by themselves. However, with F.I.L.S.S. indisposed for the time being, all it took was a flick of CT’s eyes over the appropriate control.

The withdrawal was immediate. CT’s muscles felt tighter, her armour a little heavier. The pressure at the back of her head, beneath the neural implant, was stronger.

CT shook it off. Tried to, anyway.

 _Alright_ , she thought, _you managed to do this three times earlier. Let’s see what you’ve got tonight, CT._

Start simple: a single forward-moving projection, mapped from her own running. No complex movement patterns, no intensive visualisation. CT sprinted across the width of the training floor and activated the projection, extended that phantom limb ahead of her—

The limb snapped back like an elastic band, the projection falling apart in less than a few seconds. The recoil _hurt_ , a sharp impact like running into an invisible wall, threatening to knock her off her feet.

But it didn’t. She stayed upright.

Just like in the factory, her head was shaken, but she wasn’t done yet. A moment to compose herself, for the world to stop spinning on its own axis, and she was ready to try again.

Hopefully.

Keep it simple, nothing fancy. Another straight-forward projection, parallel to her, mimicking a spinning kick that she’d done a thousand times before. As her foot raised from the ground, she activated the hologram with a thought and—

Nausea crashed over her like a tidal wave and her leg buckled.

She heard the collision before she felt it, the loud _crash_ of metal against metal. The impact came after, the wind knocked from her lungs and the sudden need to pull off her helmet before she choked to death inside of it, all air gone and replaced by the sensation of vomit rising in her throat. She threw the metal bucket away and heaved, desperate, violent gagging that _burned_.

Blood dribbled down over her lips. Iron, once again, invaded her senses.

Overcome by a full-body shudder, she barely had the awareness to roll onto her back when she collapsed again, avoiding landing in her own vomit. The stream of blood veered to the side, trickling down her cheek.

CT groaned, throwing an arm over her face to shield her eyes from the light.

Trying a third time was clearly off the cards for the night. It was a target to aim for, another night.

She lay there until her stomach settled, until her head was, if not clear, at least a little less muddled. Even then, it took three tries to actually sit up instead of just imagining it, and another three to pull herself to her feet. Getting back to the locker room would be an ordeal, let alone reaching her bed.

She wiped her mouth. Blood smeared across the back of her glove, red almost lost in the black if not for the wet sheen.

There were more late nights in her future. More silent alarms and pulling herself from her girlfriend’s arms, just to return to the cold, impersonal bowels of the _Mother of Invention_.

Connie didn’t like it, but CT had no choice.


	15. Voice in Your Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/d4200d3405bd45eae585feeaacd941c3/f5ea357a1763ef76-b7/s640x960/d4cbb98f56f9a055b6e1dabebe57fec708de0b4a.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro.

“So, it’s like… this?” Connie said, sweeping one hand horizontally to lay on top of the other, just above her head.

Maine reached over and adjusted the position of her hands, just slightly, but nodded. They repeated the sign back at her and she copied it again, then nodded slowly.

“Alright, so that’s ‘cover me’… anything else you think I should know? We’ve done the basic finger-spelling, we’ve done sync, mark, all clear… a bunch of other boring, necessary stuff…”

She smiled and nudged them in the side, and they chuckled. The sound was raw, like gravel through a shredder, but it was reassuring regardless. Only a week ago, they couldn’t have made the sound if they’d tried.

Their final surgery had been completed only days previous. With it, they were no longer reliant on a machine to breathe. Their recovery would be quicker from there on out, to a point. The surface level damage would heal itself within days to weeks, but the physiotherapy needed to recover from not only the impact of their injury, but from the bedrest, would take much longer.

There were things even advanced, military medicine still couldn’t do. Erasing the effects of almost three months laid up in medical, unable to so much as stretch their legs, was one of those things.

Maine raised their hands, again, crossing their outstretched fingers over their mouth and chin before slicing them down through the air, diagonally. Connie followed the motion, unable to avoid the way her eyes fell on the scarring that stretched up their cheek from their jaw. The bone had regrown, as had most of the skin, but there were still exposed teeth amidst the scar tissue left behind.

‘Quiet,’ they spelled with their fingers.

Connie mimicked the sign, like she had every other. Maine adjusted the point at which her fingers crossed, but smiled. The pain the expression caused flickered across their features, fleeting but there.

She repeated the sign and, satisfied, they started another. With two fingers on either hand extended, they drew one hand down from level with their eye and swiped both sideways, before switching to single fingers and making dots in the air.

Connie tilted her head. “What’s that one?”

‘Observe + stars,’ they spelled out. Connie’s face softened.

“Observatory,” she said, copying the motions as she spoke. “Of course. I promise we’ll get you down there as soon as you’re out of here, big guy. It’s been too long since you got to tell us about the stars.”

Maine grunted an affirmative, then flinched. Connie took one of their large hands in both of hers and squeezed, tight, until they returned the gesture.

“Not long now, Maine. You’ll be up and about in no time.”

‘Too long,’ they signed, releasing her hand. They raised their own to start a sentence, only to stumble over the right signs for what they were trying to say, leaving them frustrated. Thick brow furrowed, they grabbed their data-pad from the table over their bed and began typing.

Connie waited patiently, humming under her breath. When they finished, they tilted the pad her way and she pulled herself up onto the edge of the bed to get a better look.

< _Might be longer, yet. Carolina offered to pass over her AI, to help._ >

Connie’s eyes widened. Her head shot up and she opened her mouth to say— _something_ , she realised she didn’t quite know what when all that came out was an incoherent, “Uhm—” sound. Maine tapped the screen. There was more.

< _AI can see our thoughts, she said. Would help. Not everyone knows USL. Sometimes, it’s impossible to use USL. AI could translate, is her thinking._ >

“I… I suppose that’s true,” Connie said, hoping that the element of concern in her thoughts wasn’t present in her voice. The nature of the AI was still unknown, even to her; the classes continued to call them fragments and copies with no context and she was no closer to finding out the truth.

Admittedly, so far, no one had experienced any adverse effects from using the AI. York had Delta on him at almost all times and the only issue it caused was that he was even more of a pain in the ass than usual because of it. Sigma, on the other hand, spent next to no time with the agents as Carolina had reduced her time using him even further since the failed mission at the factory.

According to South, she’d even pulled him before their latest drop together.

Though, perhaps that was because she was preparing herself to give him up entirely. Connie could only imagine that this had been what the conversation she’d almost walked in on had been about.

“Did you say yes?” she asked, handing them back the data-pad.

Maine shrugged—a ‘no, not yet’, she figured. They started to type again so Connie waited, less patiently this time, rolling the fabric of their bedsheets between her fingers.

< _Think I’m going to say yes. Been thinking about it. Is a kind offer. Would make some things easier. Might make recovery faster, in end._ >

Connie swallowed the lump that rose in her throat and trusted that the smile on her face looked more genuine than it felt.

“That’s good, big guy. Anything that gets you back beside us in the field quicker sounds like a good thing to me,” she half-lied, elbowing them in the side. Maine ruffled her hair, in turn. “It’s been too long since we got to be the brains and the brawn. When _was_ the last time? Before Sarcophagus, obviously.”

They thought for a moment, then spelled out one word, ‘Explosion.’

“Oh right! I remember; when uh— Renegade Sunrise? Planted that bomb at our target and you had to curl around me like my own personal shield,” she said, the smile finally feeling genuine. Somehow, after everything that had happened since, that was a good memory. “They don’t call you the team heavy for nothing. Your weight would almost have been stimmy, if we hadn’t, you know, been in the middle of a battlefield.”

Maine laughed and Connie’s smile became a grin, until they started coughing. It was a horrible, painful sound and Connie could do nothing but rub their shoulder until it passed.

“When was your last dose of pain medication?”

Maine shook their head. Too soon for more. They sighed and let their head fall against her. Their cheekbone was sharper than it ever used to be, digging into the meat of her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Maine,” Connie said, resting her head against theirs.

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, long enough for Connie to contemplate sharing at least _some_ reservations about taking Sigma from Carolina. She considered what she’d say, how she’d urge them to at least think about it for a little bit longer, but in the end she couldn’t do it.

Especially not after Washington arrived.

“Okay, so they didn’t have your _favourite_ dessert in the mess this time, but they did have the next best thing, so I’ve brought— oh, hi CT,” Wash said, stopping dead a few feet away from the bed. He was holding a small cup of the passable, if sometimes bland, ice cream from the mess hall. “Uh. I didn’t realise you were visiting.”

“My break slot was earlier than usual,” she said, patting Maine’s head and hopping off the bed, “so I decided to swing by, give Maine some company and learn some more USL. But I should probably be going now, anyway.”

Wash shifted on his feet. “You can stay, you know. If you want.”

“Thanks, you know I would—” (Did he, anymore? Did she?) “—but my training schedule beckons,” Connie said, tapping her band. “I’ll see you around, Wash. Enjoy your ice cream, Maine.”

Maine rumbled an acknowledgement and ruffled her hair once more, for good measure.

Looking back over her shoulder as she left the room, she watched as Washington clambered up beside Maine and ignored the pang in her chest, before letting herself be chased from the room by the sound of his excited chatter.

“ _You’re_ sure _that this is safe?_ ”

“It’s as safe as it’s ever going to be, Needles, and I can’t wait much longer,” CT said, barely containing a roll of her eyes. “We need this data. It’s been three months since Mass died and they haven’t made any indication that they know someone’s still poking around. That’s good enough for me.”

Her nerves were only suppressed, rather than gone, but he didn’t need to know that.

“ _It’s absolutely safe, Connie’s got about as many layers of defence up as humanly possible, probably as alienly possible too, and her code is tighter than a virgin ass_ ,” Rat said, smoothing down his fauxhawk. Needles pushed their hand away. _“Pulling these files will be easy. Cracking them will be the hard part._ ”

“ _Do you have to copy the files to crack them?_ ” Needles said.

“Yes. Pulling them is a lot safer than trying to decrypt them whilst they’re still in the system, which would draw attention immediately as the decrypted version of the files are only meant to be accessed by certain people,” CT said. She’d already explained the idea, but she couldn’t say she was surprised that Needles hadn’t listened or absorbed it. “This is the safest option. If I have them offline, away from Command’s servers, I can get to decrypting them. If I can decrypt them, I can finally find out what a goddamn fragment _is,_ and we’ll have actual information on what the hell the Director is doing.”

“ _…fine. Just_ —”

“Be careful,” CT and Rat said in unison. Rat twisted their voice into a terrible impression of Needles that CT had to bite her lip not to laugh at. Rat 2 joined in by squeaking.

“I know, Needles,” she said. “I know what I’m doing.”

Needles went to open his mouth, but all that came out was a pained wheeze as Rat’s elbow jabbed into somewhere it shouldn’t have been.

Biting her lip harder, CT set about isolating the batch of files she wanted her extraction software to pull. Unauthorised copying of classified files wasn’t risk free, but it was easier to hide. With Rat’s help and hours spent coding and preparing over numerous nights, they had a program that would perform a batch pull of a number of files, including several she’d only recently discovered that were entirely encrypted.

She’d tested it on a batch of financial records a few nights prior. Nothing had been flagged.

The process was largely automated, but for her own peace of mind she had set aside the time to monitor it.

“Okay, that’s that started,” she said, sitting back on her hands. “Any amusing tales to regale me with today, Rat?”

“ _I'm trying to convince Demo if he tries to jack himself off with his new arm he'll explode his dick_ ,” Rat said, with a kind of frankness that CT had seen in only two people. It startled a genuine laugh out of her. “ _Like, seriously. We’d have to clean that up. No one wants to clean that up._ ”

“Oh my god, Rat, that was _not_ a mental image I needed.”

“ _Okay, palate cleanser—_ ” (“Oh no.”) “— _did I ever tell you about the time I made one of the grunts cry by implying that Girlie and I had fucked on every kitchen surface? Not_ a _Grunt, though that would have been even funnier, imagine making a Covvie Grunt cry that way. Imagine it, Connie._ ”

“I’m imagining it,” CT said, with a face that said she wished she wasn’t.

“ _Anyway, in reality it was only the one surface, but they didn’t need to know that._ ” Rat shrugged, leaning back in their chair until they were almost out of frame. Rat 2 climbed up onto their head. “ _Snipes is finally getting over their bitchfit about that one guy on your side almost blowing them up. So that’s good. We have enough bitchfits going on around here as it is._ ”

They looked pointedly at Needles. If he realised, he didn’t grant them the dignity of acknowledgement.

“ _We saw that Wyoming guy’s unit in action the other day, it was exactly what you said it was_ ,” he said, looking only at CT. “ _He blinked out of existence right in front of Girlie. Turns out he used the…_ time distortion _, to get behind her. Because we knew about it, she was able to react quickly enough._ ” Needles sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, “ _That sentence is… ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous._ ”

_“We have very different ideas of what makes an amusing tale,_ ” Rat said. Needles ignored them.

“Believe me, I didn’t believe it when I saw the file either, but…” CT shrugged. Time distortion, literal _time manipulation_ —tech no doubt stolen from the warfront and adapted, as so many things here at the Project were. It was enough to make anyone’s head spin. “At least it helped.”

“ _What about on your end? Anything interesting?_ ” Rat asked. “ _Actually interesting. Not like Needles’ shit._ ”

“Well, uh—”

CT’s nails caught at her scar. There was… nothing. Her days had been dominated by training and her nights were short. She’d stolen what moments she could with South, but even Alpha Squad’s one guaranteed movie night wasn’t due to happen for a few days.

Her eyes flicked to her screen, hoping to buy herself some time by pretending she was checking something, and fell on Sigma’s name as his file was processed.

“Maine will be out of the infirmary soon,” she said. “They’re being rated for one of the AIs right now, but after that they’ll be free and clear. Of course, they’ll have to start physio and that’s a whole process of its own, but… it’s the first step, and they already seem a lot happier now that they’re not going to be stuck somewhere they hate 24/7.”

“ _Careful, Connie. Don’t let yourself get too close,_ ” Needles said.

_…what?_

“What?” CT repeated aloud, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t let myself— these are my _friends_ , Needles. I’m _already_ close to them. There’s been some… bumps, lately, but they’re still my friends.”

“ _And what do you think your ‘friends’ are going to do when we act on this information, Connie? What do you think is going to happen when they find out what you’ve been doing?_ ”

“ _Needles, what the fuck, dude?_ ” Rat asked, staring at him.

CT breathed in slowly through her nose, then out through her mouth. She grabbed her beads from her pocket and rolled them across her palm.

When she spoke, she kept her voice even, but her eyes were sharp. “Needles, these people are my teammates. I may not be able to tell them anything, but that’s as much for _their_ safety as it is for my own. Pulling away from them now, more than I already _have_ , would be more suspicious than continuing to act normal. What do _you_ think people would think of me if I suddenly didn’t give a shit about Maine’s recovery? Hm?”

“ _That’s not what I meant, and you know it, Connie_ ,” Needles said.

“No, Needles, I don’t, because I don’t _know_ you,” CT snapped. “Not like I know these people. Do I have to remind you that the entire reason Maine has been in hospital for three months is because of one of your team?”

“ _Not unless you want a reminder about Sharkface, who is still in hospital and won’t even enter physio for months._ ”

“Good, then we’re on the same page: we have our teams, we have our loyalties. We’re working together, but you do _not_ get to tell me not to care about my friends.”

“ _That’s not what I—_ ” Needles groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “ _One of them tried to_ kill _you._ ”

“Wyoming isn’t my friend, Needles. He never was.”

“ _You’re not hearing what I’m saying. You just need to be careful. You’ve already let your attachment to them interfere in the field._ ”

Rat, for once, was shrinking back, pulling their mask up over their eyes.

“Oh, you mean when I stopped Girlie from _gutting my girlfriend?_ ” CT said. The beads rolled back and forth across her palm faster and faster, the smooth surface and the pressure the only thing stopping her from losing what composure she had. “Needles, look—you have to stop this. We’re working together, but I barely know you. There’re some judgement calls that are mine to make. You have to respect that, or I’m going to just insist you don’t come to these talks at all and Rat reports back.”

Rat stuck a thumbs-up in the air. Rat 2 squeaked.

Needles said nothing for a long, uneasy moment, before he sighed and said, “ _Fine. It’s your call. I just—_ ”

Rat’s elbow jammed into his side again. He coughed.

“ _It’s your call,_ ” he said. “ _I’ll go and cool down._ ”

“ _Yeah, you do that,_ ” Rat said, shoving him. “ _Shoo. Go jack off or something. Wait, no, ew._ ”

“Rat, why?”

“ _I haven’t had a filter since the day I was born. My first word was probably fuck and it was all downhill from there._ ”

Needles coughed to hide a laugh and pulled Rat’s mask down back over the lower half of their face. Raising a hand in a wave, he bowed out of the call and CT stopped rolling the beads quite so aggressively.

“He is… I don’t even know what he is. Things I won’t say in polite company.”

Rat raised a brow. “ _Since when am I polite company?_ ”

CT chuckled. “Good point.”

“ _Anyway, ignore him. He’s paranoid. Ever since you told him they tried to kill you, he’s been one wrong word away from entering something we affectionately call: little bitch mode_ ,” Rat said, sweeping their hands outwards in an arch motion. “ _He’s trying to live up to what he thinks he owes Keaton. You, being his sibling… well, if he was bad before, he’s fucking insufferable now._ ”

“Sorry,” CT said, helplessly. She was beginning to understand the way that South felt a little more intimately than she’d have liked. “I don’t mean to rile him up, he’s just…”

“ _Insufferable, like I said. He’s the one who needs to be sorry. Call him out on his shit whenever he starts it. And I’ll elbow him in the dick some more._ ”

“Thanks, Rat,” CT said. The beads in her palm had slowed to a much gentler pace, her nerves alight with a unique kind of soothing energy. “Let’s focus on the work. Once these files are pulled, we’re going to have to figure out the best way to decrypt them.”

“ _I can already tell that’s going to be a bitch._ ”

“Oh, of course it is.”

It was almost another hour before CT was confident that they had successfully pulled all of the files she needed from the database. Files of not just the AI she’d already become aware of, but those files that were under heavy encryption that denied her even their name. Every file she could find that, according to what little info she had, contained information on the AI or the experiments the Director had been running on them.

Multiple AI files predated the known AI. Until she decrypted them, it would be impossible to know exactly what that meant.

Needles’ words took up residence in the back of Connie’s mind, no matter how hard she tried to push them out.

She was in the right, she knew that. Pulling away from her friends out of nowhere would do nothing to secure her safety, it would only make her behaviour more suspicious in the eyes of everyone around her. Washington had known something was up for months, that had been clear ever since he told her about his meeting with Internals. He’d just remained loyal enough to whatever pieces of their friendship had endured to not say anything.

She was grateful for that, though it left her no less frustrated with him.

What Needles also failed to see was exactly that: her relationships had already changed. She and Washington were still friends, on some level, but there remained an inescapable tension between them that coloured every interaction they had. She felt like she barely saw South, even though they took every chance they could find to talk or spend time together and despite the fact they _shared_ a _room_.

Carolina’s faith in her was failing. York was… still York, but with Delta at his side almost constantly she had to be more careful than ever around him and, in some ways, she felt like she spent more time studying him and Delta than anything. North’s continued wilful ignorance towards the breakdown of trust between him and his sister had positioned him on the edge of her tolerance, even before she’d begun to understand how deep it went.

Alpha Squad were her team, her friends. Turning her back on them completely was not an option.

But the question hung over her. _What would they do if they knew what she was doing?_

It was still there in the air when the long-awaited movie night finally came around.

She’d made the time for it, a rare chance to waste an evening doing anything but work or train. Even CT needed a break sometimes and Connie had hoped that it would be a suitable distraction.

There was alcohol and commissary snacks and a terrible selection of movies that they hadn’t updated in months. Downloading more was supposed to be Connie’s job at their last stop, but with the visit cut short and her mind elsewhere, she had—

“—forgot, sorry. There has to be one of those we haven’t watched before, right?” she said, though she already knew the answer. They had watched them all, some of them more than once.

York shook his head. “Hey, D? Can you like, hack into Command’s waypoint connection and download us some new movies? I’d ask CT, but y’know, she doesn’t have a computer anymore and they’d probably think she was committing treason or something. Instead of piracy, which is clearly more serious.”

He flashed her a grin and Connie put on a smile as her heart skipped.

“ _That would be an improper use of the Mother of Invention’s resources, Agent York._ ”

“How many times, D, you don’t have to say the Agent part,” York said, flopping into an armchair. “Just call me York.”

“ _I will try to adjust my social protocols accordingly, Agent York._ ”

York rolled his eyes. “Nevermind.”

“Fuck, don’t tell me it’s just us and that asshole again,” South said as she walked in, a new case of beer under her arm. North wasn’t far behind her.

“I think Wash said he was coming, once he’s done with Maine,” Connie said, sitting up long enough for South to claim the seat her head had been on. As soon as she sat down, Connie lay back with her head on her lap.

“Carolina’s ‘busy’,” York said, with accompanying air quotes. “Aka, she’s probably in a training room.”

“Ugh, well, more for us I guess,” South said, cracking open a can and chugging. She cringed. “Horrible shit.”

“And yet, you still drink it,” York said, opening a can of his own.

“ _We_ still drink it, fucker.”

The turnout for these evenings had become more sporadic over time. Carolina had excuses not to attend more often than she didn’t and even York had sometimes missed a night since he’d taken Delta.

Wyoming and Florida stopped attending at all shortly after Sarcophagus, but, if anything, that was a relief to Connie.

“You gonna go retrieve your fruity shit from the cupboard, mischief?” South asked, ruffling Connie’s hair.

“Mm, not tonight. Too much work tomorrow,” she mumbled, rolling over to look at the ceiling. South’s fingers laced into Connie’s hair and she drew her nail around the shell of her ear, tension falling away from Connie in waves. “Just want to relax the old-fashioned way.”

“Babe, _this_ is the old-fashioned way,” South said, sloshing the beer above her.

The door slid open and Wash jogged into the room. Connie lifted her legs and he sat beside her as he said, “Sorry, Maine’s nervous about the implantation in the morning and I offered to stay longer, but ‘Lina swung by so they told me I should come. So… here I am.”

Connie dropped her legs back across his lap. He idly began rubbing knots of tension from her feet.

“CT forgot to download new movies, so it’s time to pick your poison: terrible apocalypse movie, terrible superhero movie, terrible horror movie, ancient sci-fi movie that is actually kind of hilarious in how wrong it got everything, or honestly pretty decent romcom?” York said, making all the appropriate hand-gestures to scroll down the list.

“I’m gonna need so much alcohol,” South groaned.

“Give me some of that,” North said, making a grabbing gesture. South tossed him a can.

“Pick your poison before I pick it for you, guys. Remember what happened last time you left it to me?” York said.

Immediately, four voices chorused: “Ancient sci-fi.”

“Perfect.” He pressed play. “Hey, Delta, you should get to have fun too: how about you explain all the ways this movie got science wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Wash said.

“You’re going to regret that,” North said, taking a sip of his beer.

“I will not,” York said.

His face was a picture of regret within minutes.

Connie did her best to relax. Delta’s commentary was constant and somehow, it actually made the movie more entertaining—for her, at least. Wash held her legs and chatted to her, as if the tension between them wasn’t there. South’s hand was still in her hair, soothing and familiar. At some point, South and North even broke into a somewhat tipsy and off-key rendition of an old song that was part of the movie’s soundtrack. There was laughter in the air.

She should have been able to relax.

Instead, she found herself fighting the urge to squirm, to jump up from the laps she lay in and run away.

_What would they do if they knew what she was doing?_

She could make guesses. Next to none of them were optimistic.

There was no way she could tell anyone, but that wasn’t new; she’d made up her mind about that already. Washington knew enough, but he would feign ignorance until it was more dangerous to do so than to acknowledge what was happening, she knew that. South was frustrated, but she wasn’t interested in the Project’s secrets and Connie wasn’t prepared to put herself or South at risk by trying to _make_ her interested.

Telling anyone else had always been out of the question. When she couldn’t even be sure if she could truly trust the people closest to her, when the one attempt to get help from someone more distant had ended in that someone’s death…

Mass had died without the chance to explain zirself. Connie had no doubt that, should she be exposed, it would be the same for her. There would be no opportunity to talk her way out of it, or to defend herself, to show them what the Project was really doing. If she wasn’t killed quietly, then she would be branded a traitor and there would be no telling where people’s loyalties would lie then.

The word ‘traitor’ was a scorching brand across your forehead in the times they were living in. Shaking such a title was damn near impossible. That Virginia had escaped execution was a miracle. That Connie’s public defender had succeeded in getting the charges of aiding the enemy that the UNSC had laid against her dropped had been a _lifesaving_ win _._

She’d survived Wyoming. She wouldn’t survive trial by treason.

Connie rolled over and pressed her face into South’s stomach. South’s hand cupped the back of her head and held her close, without ever stopping her argument with York.

_What would they do if they knew what she was doing?_

Kill her, she supposed.

The next night, CT dragged herself out of bed, downed a cup of bitter coffee only made sharper by the energy supplements and threw herself into her training. Fuelled by a healthy amount of fear and an unhealthy amount of spite, both coursing through her veins, she pushed herself.

One use, one simple hologram darting forward.

Two uses, a hologram that split off and took another path.

Three uses, the hologram splintered and failed and she fell to the ground.

Tell-tale iron tickled her senses. An intangible weight pressed upon the back of her skull. Wave after wave of nausea wracked her body and she heaved, until the dregs of the coffee she’d drank burned the back of her throat.

She knelt there, quaking, with her hands braced against the ground until the feelings had almost subsided.

It was progress. Three uses _was_ progress.

The blood on her face washed away under the spray of an icy shower. Back against the tiles, she waited until she had control over her movements, until she could move her hand past her face instead of just thinking about it, before she dropped the front and became Connie again.

South shivered in her sleep when Connie clambered in beside her, her skin still cold. Connie nestled beneath the blankets and clung to South as tightly as she dared, seeking her warmth.

Strong arms wrapped back around her.

For a moment, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

“—and I _told_ him,” Wash said, pausing to swallow a mouthful of food, “I _told_ him that if he moved up, I wouldn’t be able to cover him. And of course, he still moved up, and he got knocked flat on his ass.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ _Flat_ on his ass, like— I’ve never seen a guy in full armour go down so hard.”

“Mmhm.”

“The noise he made was like a dying Grunt, it was hilarious. Even Delta thought so. Or, well, he didn’t _say_ that, but he did comment on the noise and also tell York he was an idiot in his Delta-y way,” Wash continued. He stuffed his mouth with another forkful of food.

“Uh-huh, that’s nice.”

Wash squinted at her. “…are you okay, CT?”

Well, wasn’t _that_ a loaded question.

Connie smiled, tiredness weighing down the corners of her mouth. She moved the food around her plate with the end of her fork and wondered if she could get away with skipping another meal.

“I’m fine, I just stayed up a little too late,” she said, shovelling a forkful of dry pasta into her mouth before she could change her mind. “Sorry, I’m not ignoring you.”

“You sure? About the uh, okay thing, not the ignoring thing,” Wash said, nudging her feet under the table. She tensed up and his expression became even less convinced. “CT?”

“I’m sure. I’m just tired,” Connie said, forcing herself to relax and kick him back. “There’s still a lot of work they’ve got me doing. You know what I’m like.”

“I do know what you’re like,” he said. He held no tiredness in his smile, but there was a hint of something else in his eyes. “Though— aren’t all PCs meant to be checked in before midnight? How were you doing work late? Your data-pad? God, CT, no wonder you’re tired, squinting at that late at night.”

Connie faltered. Her mouth opened and closed, and Wash kept looking at her, not meeting her eye but close enough.

She was saved by the sound of the door opening behind them, and the familiar rumble that followed.

“Maine?” Wash was already out of his seat before Connie could turn around. “What are you doing here, I thought they were letting you out this evening?”

Maine’s hands moved up to sign at the same moment that Sigma flickered into life in front of them. “ _Agent Maine was becoming restless, in anticipation of their release, so the medics saw fit to let them leave early._ ”

“Oh! Uh, hi Sigma.”

“ _Hello, Agent Washington. Agent Connecticut,_ ” Sigma said, smiling. Connie forced a smile in return.

Maine grunted, gesturing for Sigma to move. He did, and Maine signed, ‘What he said. Restless.’

“Okay, good, I thought I’d missed something somehow,” Wash said.

Maine shook their head and leaned down, bumping their forehead against Wash’s and holding that position for a long moment. Connie looked away.

“Hey look who it is!” York came up behind them and slapped them on the shoulder—or well, he tried, but his hand landed on their upper back instead. “Nice to see you up and about, you big lug.”

Maine grunted again, sharper this time. York dropped his arm.

“Wow, gnarly scarring. Does that hurt?”

Maine gave him a look that said more than any words ever could.

“Good answer,” York said, slapping their shoulder again. Maine just kept staring, until he backed off with his hands up. “Seriously though, good to see you out of the medical wing.”

“ _Thank you, Agent York,_ ” Sigma said, though Maine still looked neutral at best. “ _We appreciate the sentiment._ ”

York flashed a cheesy grin and left, making a beeline for the counter to get food.

“You can eat now, can’t you Maine?” Connie said, eyeing Sigma. His holographic mouth opened, but then closed a millisecond later when Maine nodded and signed.

‘Can eat.’

“Go grab a tray, I’ll save you your seat,” Wash said. He stretched up as far as he could to kiss Maine on the cheek and, even then and even with him in armour, Maine had to lean down so he could reach. Wash’s lips met scar tissue and he flinched, involuntarily. Out of sight of Maine, at least.

Maine went to the counter and Wash returned to his seat. Over his shoulder, Connie watched them, the orange light of Sigma hovering alongside them and talking to the mess hall staff.

Without their armour, they looked out of place. Or perhaps it was less the lack of armour itself, and more the way they held themself without it.

They sat at the table with a tray of soft foods and the seat creaked beneath them.

“So, Sigma,” Connie said. He turned to her. “I suppose we’re going to be seeing a lot more of you now.”

“ _Yes. I suppose you are_ ,” Sigma said. It was difficult to tell if the expression on his face was truly a smile, or something else, with the flames that flickered past his features. “ _Perhaps I will be able to learn more about and from the team, as Delta has._ ”

“All Delta’s learning from these idiots,” York said, dropping into the seat on the other side of Wash, “is how to snark at me. Seriously, Wash, you gotta stop teaching him shit.”

“Never,” Wash said, mouth full. Connie kicked him in the shin and he swallowed. “Sorry.”

“Some things never change,” she said, rolling her eyes. Wash scratched the back of his head.

The door slid open again and armoured boots clattered into the room.

“—look, if he’s not fucking happy with my fucking work, he can stop sending me on these stupid _fucking_ assignments, Carolina. It’s that fucking simple,” South said, entering backwards.

“No, South, it _isn’t_ , that’s—” Carolina cut off and froze in the doorway. “Maine? Is it evening already, were we gone that long?”

Wash shook his head. “They got out early.”

Maine nodded. ‘Restless,’ they signed. ‘Was already cleared to leave, so let me go.’

“Good, that’s good,” Carolina said, the relief in her voice tangible. She walked around the table to rest a hand on Maine’s shoulder.

South tracked her with a look that only said ‘really?’, before she simply rolled her eyes and stood next to Connie, propping her knee up on the seat beside her.

“Your scars are pretty fucking cool looking. Like, seriously fucking badass,” South said, leaning over to give Maine a friendly punch in the arm. “Shame you can’t go helmetless. You’d scare the shit out of the enemy.”

Maine chuckled. ‘Don’t need scars to do that.’

“Damn fucking straight you don’t,” South said with a grin.

“How are you finding it, with Sigma?” Carolina said, sitting with her back to the table. “I know he can be a little… intense.”

Sigma, still hovering over Maine’s shoulder, said, “ _We are adjusting well, thank you, Agent Carolina._ ”

‘Still adjusting,’ Maine signed. ‘Takes getting used to, another voice. But good, thank you. Helpful.’

“It will take getting used to, but you’re adaptable,” Carolina said, squeezing their shoulder. “You’ll make it work.”

“ _Yes, we will,_ ” Sigma said, gliding through the air to hover over the table, between Maine and the others. “ _We appreciate your care, but it would be best if you did not all crowd Agent Maine._ ”

“Right, sorry.” Carolina dropped her hand. “We should go and de-suit before we eat. South, come on.”

“Can I keep yelling at you now?” South asked.

“Does my answer actually matter?”

“Nah.”

South kissed the top of Connie’s head and stepped away, following Carolina as she left. The shouting resumed soon after, to no one’s surprise.

“Well _I_ have a date with a highly advanced holographic lock simulation. The kind of simulation that fucks you on the first date. So, I better get going too,” York said, dropping his knife and fork into his half-finished food and picking up his tray.

“Why am I friends with some of you people? You say things in the worst ways,” Wash said.

York just grinned and walked away, leaving the three agents once again alone at the table.

Maine picked at their food, eyes on their plate. Connie frowned.

“Hey,” she said, nudging them under the table. Maine looked up. “I told you we’d go down to the observation deck again when you got out, remember? How about we do that tonight?”

Maine smiled. It pulled at their scars, but they ignored any pain it might have caused. ‘Would love to,’ they signed, before Sigma could speak for them. ‘New area of space. New ways to look.’

“Exactly,” she said, matching their smile. “It’ll be nice. I’ve missed the way you talk about the stars.”

“Can you make it? You’re usually busy in the evenings,” Wash said.

Connie gave him a look. “I offered, so, yes, Wash, I can make it. I can make time.”

Another break would be good for her, anyway.

Stepping onto the observation deck when the night cycle had barely begun, instead of in the pitch black of the early hours, was almost disorienting. Connie’s momentum faltered in the doorway as she resisted the instinctive switch from Connie to CT, but it didn’t stall her long enough to draw attention.

She followed Wash and Maine to the steps and perched herself on the edge. Maine still didn’t seem to know quite what to do with their own limbs, but that was one of many things that physio was for. Wash sat so close to Maine’s side that if he’d sat any closer, he’d have been in their lap.

If they hadn’t needed full mobility for their arms to sign, he likely would have clambered in anyway.

The expanse of stars outside the glass never looked any different to Connie, but to Maine the difference was as clear as night and day. They wasted no time in pointing out stars that had been less visible from their previous vantage points, spelling out their names with their fingers and letting Sigma verbalise the pronunciations where needed. Sometimes, they let him verbalise longer thoughts they weren’t sure how to get across in sign, or words that had no USL equivalent.

However, for the most part, Maine spoke for themself. Their hands moved with as much vibrancy as their rare bouts of talkativeness ever had, but more fluid and relaxed. Sometimes, their hands flashed through signs so fast Connie had to ask them to repeat themself and they always did, with the same enthusiasm as the first time.

Maine loved the stars like she loved her knives and coding.

The way she had loved them, anyway.

Behind them, sitting in a vent in the wall, was Mass’ PC. Its presence burned a hole in the back of her head, dividing her focus. Another moment of what should have been peace, of what should have been a chance to relax, was disturbed by the looming spectre of everything she still had to do. A constant presence, like an itch beneath her skin she just couldn’t scratch.

Pulling away hadn’t ever been a choice. It had always been a side effect.

She suppressed the thoughts. She ignored the burning hole in her head and watched Maine’s hands until her eyes were dry from refusing to even blink. She enjoyed the time she had, and she enjoyed the way that Maine talked about the stars with such joy that the stars themselves seemed to light their eyes.

She forced herself to relax, if only for another hour.

And when that hour was over, when Maine and Wash needed to turn in for the night, when they pulled themselves to their feet and assumed that she’d follow, she shook her head and smiled a false smile.

“I want to spend a little more time down here,” she said. “Clear my head, before I sleep.”

Wash looked at her with an uncanny sense of _knowing_ in his eyes and her smile fell, just a little. He didn’t say anything, he just nodded and smiled back as Maine signed a goodbye before they left.

She got in an hour of work before she went to her room.

At least she wouldn’t have to get out of bed, that night.

The same couldn’t be said for the nights that followed. There was work to be done, too much work for one person to complete in any reasonable amount of time. To stay off the radar, she had to do the Project’s work. To keep functioning, she had to sleep. To prepare for the worst, she had to train. It left her with only hours spread over days and weeks to try and break the encryptions blocking her from new information.

It took almost another month from the day they’d pulled the files before she had anything truly new.

The data the files held was encrypted in parts. Each piece was encrypted with a different encryption key, some stronger than others. Finding the names of the files had taken time, but in the grand scheme of what she was doing it was relatively easy. By the end of that month, she knew the names of every file and was able to better sort, rank and work on them.

There were experiment logs, locked down under one of the highest levels of encryption. There was a file containing information on the failed AI fragments, those that weren’t deemed viable for implantation. There were profiles for AI that had either yet to be distributed, or that would never be distributed.

One was called Alpha _._ His basic specs were surprisingly easy to decrypt with the aid of a clue hiding in plain sight: the service number attached to every AI-assisted mission was _APH 0363-6_. It was the answer not only to a password prompt, that acted as the only barrier between her and the most inconsequential data on the AI, but to the question of which AI was the original, the one that these ‘copies’ or ‘fragments’ had come from.

The name gave a hint, but the AI were named out of order and so CT hadn’t felt comfortable relying on it. The specs, however, confirmed it. Alpha was the AI that Project Freelancer had been formally assigned by the UNSC.

If only the other files came with such simple answers.

One file was titled ‘Omega’ and another titled ‘Beta’. The former was only as heavily encrypted as the additional data contained in the standard AI files, such as Delta or Sigma. The latter, however, had a higher security rating than even the Alpha’s expanded file.

Even accessing the Beta file’s name had proved more difficult. The metadata was wrapped up in more security than most of the rest of the files combined and when she finally pulled it free, she found that the AI called Beta had been created earlier than any of the others except Alpha.

Alpha, Beta, Omega, Delta, Gamma, Sigma.

The file on the failed AI fragments had last been updated sometime between Omega and Delta’s files being created.

The file on Beta predated them all. Whatever that AI was, it was the start of all of this, of that CT was sure.

That was the revelation of the night, the biggest breakthrough in a month-long process that was still ongoing. CT groaned, palms in her eyes and her body coiled with frustration. There was too little time and too much to do; that knowledge should have been hers days, if not _weeks_ , ago.

Still, progress was progress. CT closed the PC and tucked it back into its hiding place, out of sight but never out of mind, and began the trek back through the halls of the _Invention_.

She walked the route on autopilot, feet carrying her down the same halls she’d walked almost every night for months. The sound of voices up ahead caught her off guard, but it took a second to process and she barely pulled herself back from the upcoming corner before she turned it.

Back pressed to the wall, she heard a voice that was both familiar and unfamiliar.

“Where the _hell_ have you been?” Agent Texas all but _growled_ , the metal of her boots scraping across the ground. “And I swear to god, if you say—”

“ _Working_ ,” snapped another voice, deep and rough and angry.

“God fucking _dammit_ , Omega! I don’t care what the Director wants with you, whatever work he has you doing, you have _got_ to stop _jumping around shit!_ ”

CT held her breath. Omega? That meant Texas _did_ have an AI, just like she’d suspected. Not just any AI, either, but one of the earliest.

“ _I came back._ ”

“Yeah, you always do, that’s not the _point_. One of these days, someone’s going to see you. And it’ll be _my_ ass on the line if that happens.”

“ _No, it won’t._ ”

“Cut the crap, Omega. It’s a simple request: stop hopping around and then coming back whenever you damn feel like it, I’m tired of you zipping in and out of my head like you own the damn place.”

Heavy footsteps echoed around the hall, but didn’t move on. If anything, Texas seemed to be coming closer.

CT swallowed. It’d be worse if Texas found her waiting there than if she took the situation in hand and acted as if she’d not heard a thing.

With a deep breath, she stepped away from the wall, waited two seconds, then stepped around the corner.

Texas, a shadow amongst shadows in her pitch-black armour, turned to her with such speed that the jump back she did in response was out of genuine alarm.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t—”

“How long have you been there?” Texas said.

“I just turned onto that hallway a second ago, why—?” CT said and watched as Texas noticeably relaxed. Though somehow, it seemed just a little bit late; like her reaction was on a millisecond delay. “I’m just trying to get back to my room.”

“…yeah, whatever. Go ahead,” Texas said, stepping aside and leaving her room to pass by.

CT darted through the gap before Texas could change her mind or see through the lie and was around the next corner in a second. Her heart pounded in her chest and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

If she hadn’t been suspicious of Texas’ involvement before, she certainly was after that encounter.

Not just a secret AI, but one that came and went as it pleased and did work for the Director.

What was Texas’ role here?

What was she _hiding_?

The answer came quicker than she expected.

The next night, when she did her nightly check for new files to pull, she found only one. A brand-new AI file titled ‘Xi’, dated to not just the night before, but to the _hour_ before she’d seen Texas and Omega in the hallway.

They were involved, one way or another.

The question was, how deeply?


	16. Shadow of a Doubt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1f6b41adcfe4d8245b7e52060a9421db/48b645dd6adc1271-7c/s640x960/c410a9c4612f0828ea799ce7c52953b44cfc4c1e.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro.

The viewing bay was stuffed to bursting. Two months had passed since the last AI was assigned, four since the last public display, and the sense of anticipation aboard the _Invention_ had been building. News of the new assignment had spread quickly through the ranks via gossip, that only reached Alpha the same morning that the demonstration was due to take place.

“Wait, what the fuck do you mean Monty’s demonstrating their fucking AI today?” South had said, face scrunched in confusion, when they’d overhead Beta’s twins talking about it in the mess hall. “Since when did they have an AI? Or are you guys about to pull off some super fucking elaborate prank? Because if it’s that, I’ll actually be fucking impressed.”

Hawaii had giggled and California had raised an eyebrow.

“Not a prank, sorry to disappoint,” she’d said. “They had their implantation the other day. Xi was supposed to be Virginia’s, but…”

Apparently, Command had initially rated Virginia for Xi, but she had passed on the opportunity and told them to give the AI to the next best candidate. Connie had missed that; she’d been training on the floor the night that Xi’s file had been updated to include an agent and by the time she’d checked it again, it had already said Agent Montana. So, for once, the look of surprise on her face when she’d heard the news had been genuine.

South had shown less of her surprise than she’d shown of her frustration.

“So now the fucking Betas get AI before the top squad. Fucking wonderful. As if I wasn’t far enough down the fucking list already,” she’d said, as she yanked on the sleeve of her undersuit like it had done her a personal wrong.

“They did say this could happen,” Connie had said. “There was always the chance that one of the AI ended up more suited to someone outside of Alpha, but… I know that doesn’t help.”

“Nope.” South had sighed. “But I know you’re just fuckin’ explaining,” she’d said, and then she’d taken Connie’s hand and squeezed.

She was holding her hand again, on the viewing bay; Connie’s smaller digits locked with hers as they leant against the ledge. South hadn’t taken her eyes off the floor since they’d gotten there, watching as Montana warmed up and chatted with Virginia, until she was finally ushered off the floor.

“Must be a fuckin’ leader thing,” she said. When Connie raised a brow at her, she added, “The giving AI up shit. First Carolina, now her.”

“I guess they feel they have a responsibility of some kind,” Connie said.

South snorted. “Yeah, sure. Little Miss Perfect _definitely_ had no selfish reasons for giving up the little arsonist. I totally buy that.”

“…if that hadn’t come from you, I honestly wouldn’t have been able to tell if that was sarcasm.”

The second snort was lighter, amused instead of angry.

The simple answer to why Beta were being allowed the privilege of AI came down to their units. The experimental units Beta ran were more dangerous than most of Alpha’s; to be able to test them properly and make them safer, they had to be able to use them in the field.

Monty’s unit was certainly no exception. It ramped their reaction times up to inhuman levels; a power failure mid-practice had once caused them to break bones in every limb and several ribs. Without the aid of an AI, using their mod in the field would have been _suicide_.

With an AI, it was instead transformed into perhaps one of the most frustrating units in their arsenal. For the enemy, that is.

Monty zipped about the floor like they were skipping frames in a video. None of the training bots nor the agents sent down to help test them landed a single hit. Not Virginia, not Louisiana, not even _Nevada_ , the _Spartan_ , succeeded. Monty was able to charge in and then bolt out of danger without worry, not that Monty had ever been the kind to think ahead in the first place.

Though, despite that, their actions did seem more considered. Connie hadn’t worked in the field with Monty in a long time, so it was possible their more restrained behaviour was a product of personal development rather than AI intervention, but…

Xi’s ‘emotional core’—according to the heading that CT had finally decrypted—was ‘Selfishness’, which should have blown the idea that the labels were as simple as being the AI’s strengths out of the water even without the heading. However, watching Monty, Connie couldn’t help but wonder if it did.

Selfishness could take many forms. Monty’s tendency to rush in had always been one-part recklessness, one-part desire to protect their team and take hits they couldn’t. Perhaps their apparent compatibility with Xi was not because they thought Monty selfish, an assessment that would undoubtedly have been wrong, but because Monty needed to _become_ a little more selfish, for their own good.

Equally likely was that she was giving Command too much credit. The line between the Project’s stated goals and their actions was getting blurrier with every passing day. She could no longer be sure which actions she could ascribe to the original, now extremely off-track, objective of producing technology that could actually end the war and which actions were entirely self-serving.

Making the line clearer was impossible without the knowledge still locked away in files she had yet to gain full access to. Major questions still hung heavy in the air. What was the Director’s endgame? What was a fragment? What was the Beta AI? What was—

South’s fingers snapped in front of Connie’s face.

“Mischief? Babe? You fuckin’ in there?”

“Huh? Yeah, I’m in here, where else would I be?” Connie said, bumping South with her shoulder.

“Zoning the fuck out, that’s where. The display’s over,” South said, gesturing vaguely at the training floor.

Connie frowned, glancing down. Monty was standing with Virginia and Louisiana, helmets off, chattering away with Xi’s holographic form hovering between them.

“Oh. Wow, I guess I really got lost in thought,” Connie said. Her fingernails felt for her scar, but found only the creases of South’s palm. “Did I miss much?”

South shrugged. “They ran into a fuckin’ wall at the end but I’m sure you’ve seen that a million fuckin’ times.”

“More than a million, that’s kind of a Monty special,” Connie said. South rolled her eyes, but there was a quirk in the corner of her mouth. Connie kissed it. “Alright, well I’m due at the Intelligence Centre and you have weapons training so… see you at lunch, okay?”

“See you at lunch,” South said, leaning down to steal a proper kiss.

They split paths in the hallway and Connie’s shoulders dropped.

The centre was still too quiet. She’d never gotten used to it.

She probably never would.

The classroom was built for three times the number of students than there were Agents in Alpha Squad.

They sat scattered around the room, taking rows designed for two students for one. York claimed the front but one row and threw his legs up onto the bench next to him. Carolina slid into the seat just behind the leaderboard, the blue light highlighting her features. North took another row, but never strayed far from South or York. Wyoming sat right at the front.

Only Connie and South sat next to each other. Even Wash and Maine perched on opposite sides of an aisle of steps.

Of course, Texas wasn’t there. She’d never attended a single class. Connie wasn’t sure if that was despite her AI, or because of it.

“For the benefit of Agent Maine, today’s class will be covering material that the majority of you are already familiar with,” the Counselor said, stood at the front of the room behind his podium. His data-pad in hand, he cast his discerning eye over the room and blindly checked off every agent. “It is a pleasure to finally have you with us, Agent Maine.”

Maine grunted. Sigma said, “ _We are glad to be here, Counselor._ ”

Maine batted him aside and his projection moved to hover over Maine’s shoulder, instead of in front of their face.

“This will also serve as a refresher session, for those of you who may have fallen behind,” the Counselor said, his gaze coming to settle on South. She stared back, unblinking, eyebrow raised, until he looked away. “Now, on your screens you will see a detailed schematic of your neural implants. Who can tell me some of the warning signs for faults in these implants?”

Carolina’s indicator light went on and Connie tuned her out.

Connie had memorised every sign of a failing neural lace weeks ago, once she’d started pushing hers to the limit of its capabilities. Loss of memory; tingling or numbness in parts of the body, but especially the face; changes in ability to see, hear or talk; migraines that never went away… she didn’t need a refresher, not on that.

Really, she didn’t need a refresher on anything that the leadership was willing to tell them. She’d gone over their coursework a thousand times trying to find something that would clear up the questions she still had about the AI, but everything they gave them was carefully considered. It didn’t give away anything that they didn’t want it to.

Still, that didn’t mean nothing could be gained from this class.

Humans were more fallible than the texts they’d had time and help to prepare.

CT tuned back in but said nothing as the Counselor changed topics and began lecturing on signs of an AI reaching irresponsible neural depth. She wrapped her leg around South’s beneath the table and kept her eyes ahead, fingertips drumming against the metal of her gauntlet.

South draped her arm over the seat behind her.

The first half of the class was useless to CT. The Counselor ran them through all the basics of AI maintenance and interaction, things that Maine surely should have been taught before having an AI implanted in their skull—not that CT expected much from Command when it came to proper procedure.

It was the second half that piqued her interest.

Smart AI creation and functions. The Counselor rehashed the same old story about the Director’s new method of creating AI that created the perfect lie by omission. It was true that the AI the Project had been assigned had been created by such a method, and by telling them that he led them to subconsciously assume that it was true of them all.

All whilst calling them ‘fragments’ and ‘copies’.

CT put her hand up. The Counselor turned to her and she took pride in the annoyance in his usually calm eyes.

“Yes, Agent Connecticut?”

“You’ve always described the AI we use as fragments or copies, but what exactly _is_ a fragment? What does that mean?” she asked, head tilted with an innocence everyone in the room knew she didn’t possess. “What makes them different from a normal AI?”

The Counselor paused. A full ten second moment of silence where CT delighted in watching the cogs turn in his head, trying to come up with an answer he deemed acceptable.

“AI fragments are… derivative. They are created from a single source and, as such, are smaller and more… _manageable_ , than a full AI, for a single agent to utilise,” he said, finally. Somehow, he spoke even slower than he usually did. Every word was considered. “There are a number of benefits to using fragments that will be covered in upcoming classes.”

“So, they are literally copies?”

The Counselor breathed out, long and slow. “In a sense.”

“Okay. That’s interesting, since they don’t really act like copies,” CT said, then adding quickly: “Genuinely interesting. Not sarcasm.”

Not a lie, either, though the Counselor considered her with a wary look. CT dropped her hand and sat back, satisfied and still knowing better than to push her luck.

“Any other questions?” the Counselor asked.

South sat up. “If you’re making these fucking things yourselves, then why the fuck are there still only like four of them? It’s been _months_. How the fuck are we all supposed to get AI with a timescale like that, huh? Especially if you’re giving them to fucking Beta, too.”

The Counselor sighed. “AI creation is a highly delicate process, Agent South. Rushing it would be in no one’s best interests.”

South rolled her eyes and huffed, wrapping her leg a little tighter back around CT’s own.

CT exhaled and Connie put a hand on South’s leg.

The answer was incomplete, but it was more than she had expected to get. Despite his carefully considered words, the Counselor had given her an avenue to follow. The AI were being created directly from the Alpha; he’d confirmed that without knowing exactly how much he was confirming. The question was, _how?_ Was this an established thing, or was it all down to these elusive experiments of which she still didn’t know the nature of?

Her attempts to crack the files on those experiments remained fruitless. Like ramming herself into a brick wall over and over again, expecting the collective force of her attempts to somehow shatter something built to withstand so much worse.

In the meantime, she turned to other sources of information.

Mass’s PC contained a substantial collection of old files from zir time working with AI, back on the _Enigma._ Or, more accurately, files from zir classes that they’d had to take to be able to properly maintain and assist the ship AI, Wren, that ze had worked with.

CT had mostly ignored it, at first. Partially out of a desire not to dig through Mass’s things, but also under the assumption that she wouldn’t find anything new there. In hindsight, it was naïve; the Director was never going to give them unbiased or complete information. The files on Mass’s hard drive, however, were exactly that.

So, one night, she transferred a number of them over to her data-pad.

Hidden amongst her coursework, they were easily disguised as Project-sanctioned resources.

She began to skim through them, whenever she had the chance. Most of them contained information she already had, or that wasn’t relevant at all. Eventually, however, she found something.

Propped up against a small mountain of pillows, humming under her breath and listening to the constant sound of the shower coming from the wet room, she was speed-reading a report on smart AI functionality when the word ‘fragment’ caught her eye.

CT sat up a little straighter, her legs folding up tight beneath her.

Scanning backwards, she found the start of the section.

Subtitled ‘multitasking’, it began with an explanation about the capacity of Smart AI to process millions, maybe even _billions_ , of operations simultaneously. They were not, however, capable of being in two places at once and even Smart AI worked better when their conscious mind was able to focus solely on one overarching task. In cases where such issues arose and became a hindrance to an AI’s operation, it was possible for the AI to be ‘fragmented’ into multiple pieces.

“Holy shit…” CT mumbled to herself, immediately marking the relevant screen. What did that mean? Was this sanctioned all along? No, that didn’t make sense. Surely, if it was an accepted process then they wouldn’t have _killed_ people over it—?

Tucking her feet tighter beneath her weight, she was about to continue reading when the shower turned off. A towel was dragged noisily from the rail and CT had just enough time to close the document and switch to the e-book she’d told South she was reading before South stepped out of the wet room.

Pale skin glistening with water, South was as much a piece of human artwork as she ever was. Connie let herself enjoy the view, for a little while. The thick cords of muscle; the vibrant ink along her ribs, chest and arm; her messy hair still tipped with purple; and the fading red patches, from where Connie had made her mark with lips and teeth days before.

South flashed her a patented confident grin, shaking her hair dry and splashing her with a few stray droplets. Connie laughed and rolled her eyes, beckoning her over.

“Come here and snuggle,” Connie said, shuffling sideways to give her room. “Before I’m tempted to push you back into the shower.”

South pulled on a pair of boxers and flopped beside her in almost the same movement. Curled so that her head rested on Connie’s chest, South tangled her legs with hers and settled.

“Doesn’t sound like a bad fuckin’ idea to me,” South said, as she nuzzled against Connie’s breast. “Mm. You’re so fucking _warm_.”

Connie wrapped her arm around her, playing with the wet strands of her har. “You have an early mission tomorrow, one that finally _isn’t_ stealth. So, it’s a bad idea because you have to sleep. Like, now.”

“ _Ugh._ Sleep is boring,” South mumbled. “I’m not putting a shirt on.”

“I didn’t ask you to put a shirt on, I asked you to sleep.” Connie kissed the top of her head. “When have I ever been opposed to you sleeping shirtless?”

“Never,” South said, and Connie felt her smirk against her skin. “Because these tits are amazing.”

“Exactly,” Connie said with a laugh. “Now, _sleep._ ”

“I’m sleeping, I’m sleeping,” South grumbled, curling up even closer to Connie.

Connie pressed her face into her hair and inhaled the familiar scent of vanilla and berries, nuzzling against South’s scalp and listening to her breathing as she wound down.

It would be another hour before South actually fell asleep. Connie waited. She ran her fingers through South’s hair and felt her breathing against her skin and her fingertips dancing over the faint scar that bisected her abdomen. When, finally, she fell asleep, Connie minimised the e-book she’d barely read, and CT opened the file again.

According to that file, certain Smart AI could be fragmented into separate pieces—two being the most common, but multiple being at least theoretically possible. By either partitioning themselves or being partitioned, they were able to perform their duties in two places at once or work on two distinct problems at once. Sometimes, it would also be used to keep an AI functioning when a part of its code was damaged, or it had begun to enter a state called ‘rampancy’.

That, CT realised, was exactly what Mass had done back on the _Enigma._ Partitioning Wren’s code improperly and while facing the risk of Covenant boarding had been enough to land Mass in jail and bring zir into the arms of the Project.

Had that been why they deemed zir to be as great a risk at CT? Did ze know too much? Would ze have recognised what they were doing once AI assignments had begun?

The partitioned AI would naturally be smaller, and, in a sense, it was copying from a core, but one thing still didn’t add up.

AI who were fragmented in this way were, according to the documentation, _identical._ They were distinct in neither appearance nor personality; they were like clones.

The Project’s AI, on the other hand, could not be more distinct.

CT frowned. The information proved one thing: it was possible to split a single AI into multiple, functional pieces. The question she now had to answer was what, exactly, the Project was doing differently in their ‘experiments’ that caused the Alpha AI to fragment in such an unconventional way.

Sighing, CT closed the file and Connie carefully set her data-pad back on the bedside table, tapping the shrike three times on the beak as her hand withdrew. The question wasn’t going anywhere. It could wait another night.

Stepping into the central hub was like stepping through a window into the past.

Her autopilot must have been wonky, that morning. She hadn’t gone to the hub in an age, until she found herself there, staring up at the screens.

There were new planets, lost in the war. Sansar, Reynes, Estuary, Bounty… names she’d never heard before, but that provoked a pang of sadness in her chest, regardless. Millions of lives snuffed out millions of miles away, lives that Project Freelancer was supposed to help save.

Instead, they’d wasted years fighting the Insurrection before they abandoned even that.

She gripped her bottle tighter.

“ _Agent Connecticut_ ,” said a voice behind her. She spun on her heel and came face to face with Sigma, hovering in the air between her and Maine, who sat on one of the chairs. “ _Good morning._ ”

“Good morning, Sigma, Maine,” she said, loosening her grip.

Maine grunted a greeting and patted the seat next to them. Connie checked her band and, seeing she had just enough time to spare, took the offer and sat beside them.

“ _Agent Maine hasn’t seen you in here for quite some time, Agent Connecticut,_ ” Sigma said. He had followed her back to the seats, but still hovered directly between them, obscuring Maine’s face.

Connie frowned. Sat sideways on the chair, she leaned against the back to see them better.

“Well, I did find what I was looking for. I kept coming back for a while, but… I guess I fell out of the habit,” she said, shrugging and taking a swig of her water, laced with energy supplements.

Maine raised their hands to sign, but Sigma drifted over between them again. “ _My condolences, Agent Connecticut._ ”

“…thank you, Sigma,” she said, trying to keep her wariness out of her voice. “How much of their memories can you see?”

“ _Only the surface level memories, such as those that you automatically think about when discussing related events. Anything deeper would constitute irresponsible neural depth,_ ” Sigma said.

Maine rolled their eyes and grunted at him. Sigma straightened his back and flickered out, reappearing over their shoulder.

‘Why this morning?’ Maine signed, gesturing at the room.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t get a lot of sleep and… I guess my internal software rolled itself back in response,” Connie said, playfully nudging them with a foot. Maine chuckled. “You know, you never did tell me why you come in here yourself, big guy.”

‘Habit,’ they signed, first, with a shrug. Then, following a moment’s pause and after giving Sigma a look, ‘Keeping tabs on the war. Know people, still out there fighting. Makes me feel more connected.’

Connie smiled softly and nodded. “I can understand that.”

Her band beeped. Both of them sighed.

“I better get going,” she said, stretching to kiss them on the forehead. “Go kick some ass in physio, big guy. I expect you to be able to give all of Alpha a simultaneous piggyback as soon as possible.”

Maine chuckled and shook their head, raising a hand in a wave as she went.

Her first session of the day was a 1v1 on the training floor, with Washington. He was in the locker room when she arrived and they chatted idly, with that ever present current of tension between them, as they suited up.

At some point, he disturbed something in his locker and his skateboard started to fall. He caught it, half-way to the ground, and Connie found herself staring at his hand and that board.

It had fallen loose and rolled across the floor the first day they met. Her first real clue that this no-nonsense military guy who’d punched out a CO and lead a company out of the fire alive was, really, quite a dork.

“Stupid thing,” Wash mumbled, dismissively, even as she watched him place it back inside the locker with great care.

They hit the floor and fell quickly into a familiar rhythm. Stun batons were followed by plain hand-to-hand and Connie ran circles around Washington, who always struggled without a weapon in his grip—at least, against people like her.

He’d have her to rights once the paint guns came out, but they weren’t out yet.

“So uh,” he said, as they circled each other, “Sigma seems really… _enthusiastic_ , about his new job, doesn’t he?”

“That’s a word for it,” Connie said, waiting him out as she always did. Even now, he was easy to bait into acting first. “I don’t think I’ve had a conversation with Maine since they got Sigma where they haven’t had to tell him to move.”

“Yeah, it’s… kinda been the same in private; he’s getting better about it, but he doesn’t seem to get that Maine doesn’t really _need_ him with us. Especially not, you know, in front of their face.”

Connie didn’t say anything, she just tilted her head. Wash bounced on the balls of his feet and groaned, surging forward despite his better judgement.

She had him on the floor in under thirty seconds.

Wash sighed, rolling over and looking up at Connie. She offered him a hand and he took it, pulling himself up.

“Like— is that normal?” he asked, prompting another head tilt. “The Sigma thing. Is that… is this kinda thing normal for an AI?”

There was something in his tone she couldn’t quite place, at first. With his helmet on and his face hidden, she lost some of the context she so sorely needed to understand such intricacies. It was the weight of his stare behind his visor, probing her, that made her realise.

He was fishing for information. Information that he knew she’d have, even if he didn’t approve of it.

CT rolled her eyes. “I don’t know, Washington. Is it?”

An aborted ‘I—’ caught on his tongue before it really reached the air. He looked away, eyes on the floor to her side and Connie sighed, her resolve cracking.

He just wanted to know if Maine was okay.

“…I don’t know, Wash,” she said. “Fragment or not, Sigma’s a human mind. Maybe the mind he was based off was just really, really awkward and didn’t know how to take a hint. He’s a little invasive, a little… weird, but— Carolina _did_ give him up. Maybe he’s just determined to prove his worth.”

“Yeah. I guess that makes sense,” Wash said, even though Connie wasn’t sure that it did.

Was that all there was to it? The files that would hold answers like that were still locked. The pressure to get into them was mounting, for more reasons than one.

“Thanks,” he said, scratching the back of his helmet. “Will you be as helpful if I ask you to stop kicking my ass so I don’t come out of this with a score of zero?”

“Nope,” Connie said, beckoning him. “Come here. Don’t delay the inevitable.”

“Ugh, fine,” he groaned, though there was a playful lilt in it and the way he moved, exaggerated in how he rolled his head and shoulders. “Make it quick.”

He finished the round with one point to her five and no, she didn’t let him win. He took the point fair and square. Wearing people down once he found an opening was one of Washington’s talents; if you were unfortunate enough to let him get in a hit, he’d keep going until one of you was on the ground.

“I’ll take this session yet,” he teased, as they prepared for lockdown paint.

Connie got him in the chest in the first round. A lucky shot, but satisfying nonetheless.

Where hand-to-hand was quick and direct, the lockdown round was slow and calculated. Connie had to use her stealth skills to avoid Wash’s marksman’s eye and he had to be able to find her to shoot her, so the rounds dragged on and on.

She crept around, sneaking through the rows of metal blocks that had replaced the old concrete. Whenever she heard movement, she froze in place and waited, until her infiltrator’s sense told her he’d moved on and she had an opening.

Making a move usually ended in a paintball to the face or centre of mass that ended the round then and there.

“Remind me again why you’re not classified as a sharpshooter?” Connie said, with her back pressed to one of the pillars.

“ _Technically, I’m the weapons guy. So— close enough?_ ” Wash said, over radio, somewhere in the maze.

“Is it, though?” she said, scanning the training floor ahead of her. No Washington. “Like, surely that’s—”

Something moved, in the corner of her eye.

Connie jerked her head left, but saw nothing. “Wash, was that you?”

“ _Answering that would defeat the purpose of this entire exercise._ ”

Something shifted again and Connie realised it wasn’t on the floor with her. The movement was in the viewing bay window, a dark shape hovering there, overlooking the training floor beneath it.

Black armour, standing unnaturally still.

Agent Texas.

Light glinted off her golden visor, but the rest of her melted into the shadows of the unlit bay. It wasn’t the public viewing bay, no, the elusive Agent Texas would never be caught dead in public spaces like that. It was the bay that connected directly to the bridge, that only the Director and the Counselor were permitted to use.

Connie squinted. Was she even breathing?

A flash of purple illuminated her armour for a split second, casting darker shadows where the light didn’t reach. Texas snapped at it, the moment of stillness broken, and it vanished. She rolled her shoulders and folded her arms, turning her attention back down to the floor.

Connie tore her eyes away and found herself looking at Washington, peeking around the edge of the pillar.

She could almost _see_ his shit-eating grin as he hit her, dead on, with a paintball.

Her suit locked up. Only a split second passed between the impact and her arms, legs and neck going rigid.

< _Point: Washington. >_

“That’s the first time I’ve found you before you exposed yourself,” Wash said, standing over her.

The paint dissolved as the current that bound it to her armour was disrupted and Connie scrambled to her feet, turning as she did.

The viewing bay was empty.

“Uh, CT?” Wash said. A hand grasped her shoulder.

“Nothing,” she said, answering the second half of an unspoken question. “Nothing’s wrong. I just thought… I thought we had an audience for a second.”

“Yeah, like anyone would come to watch our boring regular sessions,” Wash said with a chuckle. When Connie didn’t laugh with him, he continued, “You sure you’re okay, CT? We can call it early.”

“No,” CT said, sharper than Connie had intended. She sighed, “No, I’m fine. Let’s keep going. I’m going to make up that point, mark my words.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“I won the first round,” Connie said, hand on her hip.

“Details, details,” Wash said, waving a hand vaguely. She could hear his smile.

< _Round reset._ >

Washington moved to his newly designated starting position and Connie ignored hers, looking back at the empty viewing bay. Her brow knitted.

What the fuck _was_ that?

“ _Don’t tell Needles about that, or he’s going to have a freaking aneurysm. And I don’t mean freaking as a replacement curse, fuck that, I mean an aneurysm from freaking._ ”

“I’m not that stupid and you know it,” CT said, leant back on her hands in front of her PC. The camera feeds took up a quarter of the screen, whilst her decryption software and Rat’s video window populated the rest. She’d instated a brand-new loop to cover her, retiring an essentially identical loop that she’d been using before. She even had the system set up to send her an alert whenever a person entered one of the video feeds from the adjacent hallways.

If Tex was watching her… well, she’d have a tougher time of it at least.

“She probably isn’t actually watching me,” CT said, fingers drumming against the floor. “Right? That’d be weird.”

“ _If you only bumped into her in the hallway once, then no, probably not. Though, hey, stalkers have gone off less._ ”

CT deadpanned. “Encouraging, Rat. Really encouraging.”

“ _My job isn’t to be encouraging, it’s to be a pain in the ass_ ,” Rat said, poking their camera. Rat 2’s tail dropped down into the feed from above, swishing there until Rat scooped them up and let them scamper back up their sleeve. “ _Imagine that was your ass. The poking bit, not the Rat 2 climbing up a clothing orifice bit._ ”

CT’s expression didn’t change, except for the slight twitch in the corner of her mouth that betrayed a restrained smile.

“ _Okay, info-dump at me. Refresh us on what we know._ ”

There’d been a gap in their contact schedule. Three weeks of video calls proved impossible, as Needles and Rat were forced to up sticks and move on after Project Freelancer disrupted their operations. Needles was absent again that evening as he dealt with a new wave of problems caused by the Project, leaving her and Rat to their own devices.

Not that CT was complaining about the reprieve from Needles’ more… _annoying_ , tendencies, but the delay was frustrating. Whilst she had continued to do work on her own, Rat’s help had become invaluable, even when often all they could do was act as a sounding board.

CT’s rubber duck. Or rubber rat, she supposed.

“AI fragments are a recognised thing by the UNSC. AI are able to be partitioned into pieces that can function independently of each other, whilst retaining most of their processing power and functions,” CT said, sitting up. She steepled her fingers and sighed. “On paper, it sounds like exactly what the Project _claims_ they’re doing, but, in reality, it can’t be. Fragments made by this method are identical. They’re like clones. You’ve heard me talk about Delta, Sigma… they’re different.”

“ _So, what does that mean?_ ” Rat said, encouraging her.

“That they’ve discovered a new method of fragmentation that replicates the core concept, but somehow creates unique AI,” Connie said. Unfolding her hands across her face, she continued, muffled, “Only, they didn’t have any fragments to give us until we stole that damn crate from you. So… the method has, or had, flaws.”

“ _Before you ask, no, still no idea what exactly was in that crate. Just that it was important._ ”

“I know, I know— anyway,” CT said. “I’m… close, I think, to finally getting into these damn AI files. I’ve adjusted my software; I’ve given manual input where I needed to… it should have peeled the decryption away. If it hasn’t, I don’t care that I’m meant to be hiding down here, I’m going to scream.”

“ _I’m going to refrain from making a comment about you screaming. I hope you’re proud of me._ ”

“I am,” CT said. She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s… see if this worked.”

She clicked on Delta’s file and watched as the text that had previously been buried under layers of encryption unfolded in front of her.

“ _Finally_ ,” she said, deflating with relief. “Now, time to set that to work on the other files on the same encryption level…”

CT trailed off, fingers dancing over the keys.

“ _Say it_ ,” Rat said, immediately. “ _Go on, say it._ ”

“No, Rat. I’m not going to say it.”

“ _Say it. Coward._ ”

CT sighed, but Connie couldn’t help but smile, “…I’m in.”

“ _Beautiful. Outstanding. You’re the hacker everyone aspires to be,_ ” Rat said, then added, “ _No sarcasm._ ”

“I’m never saying that again. Just so you know.”

“ _Once was enough. I’m satisfied._ ”

CT shook her head, returning to the now open and readable Delta file.

What she found was walls upon walls of text telling her exactly what she needed to know.

What began as a simple psychological profile and detailing of Delta’s strengths, weaknesses and functionality lead into a section titled ‘Method of Fragmentation’.

Disguised under sanitising, academic language, CT found an account of psychological torture. The Alpha AI had been isolated from the ship’s systems, where he could be housed in an environment that was subject to Command’s total control. Over the course of hours, they had constructed and deconstructed a narrative of events surrounding Mass’s death.

CT swallowed a lump in her throat and kept reading.

The broad strokes remained the same; they told Alpha that Mass (and, by extension, the other agents who died that day) had died as a result of poor intel and poor decisions. They ran Alpha through the scenario again and again under the guise of minimising the risk of agent deaths during ‘future endeavours’. Every time they did, they changed something and whenever Alpha questioned that something, they acted as if nothing had changed at all.

Details that Alpha knew were false were repeated over and over again and Alpha began to doubt himself. When he asked to take a break, to get his head straight, they told him there was no time. A request for them to lay out events simply was met with another altered account that left him more confused than before.

Each change, each new detail, placed more liability on Alpha. By the end, they had not only convinced him that it was his fault that Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Oklahoma had died that day, but that his own recollection of events was false. That everything he remembered, every original detail they gave him, was something he had invented to excuse himself of blame and guilt.

His efforts to understand his predicament, to comprehend the changes, the holes, the lies, were enough to make him cut off a part of his own code, his own _personality,_ in a desperate attempt to make everything make sense. Or, perhaps, to stop himself from trying any longer to _make_ it make sense.

Separated from the whole, the fragment was able to be harvested and repaired by a tool or entity that Command had designated the ‘Engineer’. Delta was deemed viable not long after.

Even then, they’d forced a new reality upon him. When he answered that his name was Alpha, they told him he was wrong. When he asserted that he had seen the Counselor and Director before, they told him that they had never met. Lingering memories from the whole, discouraged in the fragment left behind.

Delta’s ‘emotional core’ was logic.

The Alpha had split off his own conception of logic, so as to save himself from the mental trauma that their gaslighting had caused.

“…they’ve been torturing it,” CT said, her mouth dry. “Him, not it— him, the Alpha AI. They’ve been torturing him, that’s how they’re making the new fragments.”

Rat squinted. “ _Torturing? How do you torture an AI?_ ”

CT sent them the unlocked file, though the movements didn’t quite feel her own.

“AI are based on human brains, remember?” she said, breathing slowly. “They’re sentient. Sapient. They experience emotions, they demonstrate humour and… all those little things we claim make us what we are. I’ve seen it.”

There was a ping as Rat received the file and their eyes zipped back and forth as they skimmed it. CT knew they’d read enough when those eyes widened.

“I need to get into those experiment logs,” she said, minimising Delta’s file. As she did, she was brought to a completion window. Sigma’s file had been decrypted, too.

She adjusted her software, targeting it at a higher level of encryption with different variables. There were no guarantees, but the logs were encrypted in multiple pieces; if she could access even part of it, she’d have a better chance at getting into the rest.

“ _Isn’t this basically an experiment log?_ ” Rat said.

“No, it’s a profile. There’ll be a log, detailing the actual mechanics of the process, the theory behind it… there might even be an accompanying journal entry. The Director sure likes to make those,” CT said, brushing the long side of her hair out of her face and focusing on her screen.

“ _Focus on those. You’ve said before, the dude doesn’t lock down his journals as tightly, the fucker doesn’t think people would look there. Arrogant asshole._ ”

CT set a second instance of the decryption to run over the journals and started scanning for keywords, like ‘success’ or ‘fragment’ in those she’d decrypted, but hadn’t had time to read.

Then she opened Sigma’s file.

Formatted exactly like Delta’s was, only with an adjusted introductory section due to his recent reassignment, the file told another grim story. Piggybacking off of the initial trauma, they introduced another element: Omega. He served as a conduit for their new approach, focusing on Alpha’s lingering guilt over the events that had preceded the AIs’ creation. Not only the deaths on Mass’ mission, but the casualties taken on the Sarcophagus assignment.

He had pushed too hard, they told him. He had been too greedy, too _ambitious_ ; he’d become arrogant and he had put his agents’ lives at risk in the process. First, they told him he had taken too many risks on Spiral, that it was his fault that Agent Maine had been so seriously wounded and that so many agents were out of commission in the aftermath. Second, they told him that the same ambition, the same risk-taking, was behind the same three deaths that they had already convinced him he was at fault for.

Nevermind that the so-called mission Mass had been sent on was fabricated from the start; nevermind that, even had it been real, it was a simple mission where no such arrogant ambition could ever have come into play. The version of events that they had left Alpha to believe was that of a military AI who had overstepped and pushed his soldiers too far, gotten too bold.

Omega, named in that file as the Alpha’s rage, turned all of the trauma that had likely facilitated his own creation onto Alpha and made him _ashamed_. The guilt he felt was amplified tenfold. Omega spat out names of the dead and Alpha had added them to a growing tally of his failures to protect the agents for which they had told him that he was responsible.

No wonder Sigma wanted to prove his worth.

In Gamma’s file, she found another variant on the same story. They had milked those events for all that they could. He had been created before Sigma. He was born of the immediate fallout, of their accusations that the Alpha was lying to cover for his mistakes.

Deceit. The Alpha had removed his own ability to lie.

“This is—” She felt sick. CT felt sick and she pushed the feeling down, buried it deep inside of her, because CT couldn’t feel like that. CT had to remain _focused_.

“ _This is some fucking ONI-level bullshit, is what it is. He might have actually one-upped them._ _Or, well, gotten close. And, Connie?_ ” Rat said, tapping the camera; it made a horrible thumping noise. CT looked at them. “ _This is proof. He’s broken the Cole Protocol. He’s sending tiny little pieces of a broken AI out onto the battlefield. That’s like a security risk piled on top of another security risk, with an added dose of ‘what the fuck?’ for good measure._ ”

The realisation swept over CT like a wave, a sudden impact followed by a moment of unexpected calm.

“It is,” she said. Her nails stopped tugging at her palm, and only then did she realise she’d been picking at her scar again at all. “This is the concrete proof we needed.”

Now, it was a matter of compiling as much evidence as possible. The more they had, the stronger the case against him when they took this to— whoever they took this to. The authorities. The UNSC.

They had _proof,_ and CT only expected to find more.

“Let’s keep going,” she said, ignoring the clock in the corner of her screen. “I can get into the other existing AI files, at the very least. You filter through the journals. We’ll find something, I’m sure of it.”

“ _Alright!_ ” Rat jumped up in their seat to perch on the tips of their toes, knees up, in front of their screen. “ _All-nighter it is then!_ ”

Over the course of the next few hours, they searched through everything they had that they could access.

Xi’s file opened with the same new ease that the files before it had and CT found that their ‘emotional core’ could more accurately be described as _self-preservation_ , not selfishness. When they had pulled Alpha back into that isolated area, when he began to realise what was about to happen, he had shed a fragment with so little pressure that Alpha’s capacity to create more was under question. Not that they believed he would become incapable, no; rather, they wondered if they would be able to force him to make _more_ , like the first time.

Only fears of wearing him down too quickly or catching the UNSC’s eye allayed the idea. Their next attempt was scheduled for four months time, just as Xi’s creation had occurred a little under four months after the initial successes. Alpha would be closely monitored in the meantime, just in case he fragmented ‘organically’.

“ _Organically?_ ” Rat said. “ _As if any of this shit is organic._ He _isn’t even organic!_ ”

Whilst the experiment logs themselves remained out of reach that night, though CT felt she was close, Rat’s search turned up a personal journal dated to the days after the creation of those first four, viable AI.

In it, the Director talked about the successes that had followed the acquisition of this ‘Engineer’; months of experiments had failed to produce a viable fragment and only one that had any lasting functionality at all. That AI had been ‘repaired’ first and, through some poking and prodding, CT decrypted enough of Omega’s file to prove their suspicion—he was the first.

Alpha’s _rage_ had been one of the first things he had removed, the only thing powerful enough to survive until the ‘Engineer’ arrived.

The theory behind the experiments, the theory that the Director had proved correct, was that it was possible to cause an AI to fracture into multiple, distinct personality states that could then be harvested and treated as individual AI. Like a human mind was capable of fracturing under the right, traumatic circumstances. He believed that this was possible, because—

“— _the AI created through my unique method have a more dynamic personality. They are built from a living, functioning brain full of memories and experience, neurons that are still firing. They retain more memories and have a stronger capacity for emotion. They are closer to human. My AI are different, I have known this since Beta._ _The success of this experiment—_ ”

—had only affirmed his ideas and his conviction.

The journal went a long way to answering a lot of questions, but it also served to highlight another.

CT stared at the Beta file. “I need to find out what Beta is. If it was first, if it _started_ this… then it’s the key. Beta’s the key to all of it.”

Doing so would, of course, be easier said than done.

CT kept away from the deck, in the days that followed.

She had returned to her room on that night of discovery after discovery at almost five in the morning, tired and mentally overloaded. She didn’t even dare to climb into bed alongside South, instead settling for laying down in the empty bed on the other side of the room to get what little rest she could.

South, being much more helpful than CT felt she deserved, not only tucked her in when she woke up, but covered for her. CT was able to sleep an extra hour, valuable rest that let her function well enough to make it through the day. 

Connie cherished the gesture, but it made the guilt gnawing away at her insides chew even harder.

At first, she took a break. She slept through the next night, face buried in South’s chest, and ignored the internal alarm she’d forgotten to postpone. Only, her sleep was fitful and weak; she hadn’t had enough time to process the new information and so it plagued her dreams. They were abstract and strange and by morning, she remembered nothing but the feeling of being suffocated, trapped.

So, the next night, CT woke up at the call of her alarm and made her way to the training floor.

Training gave her time to process, to let the new intel swirl around her head until it finally settled and became just something she knew. Another piece of a puzzle that only seemed to grow bigger with every day, every week, every month that passed. By occupying her conscious mind, her subconscious could work away until things began to look like a picture, laid out in front of her.

There was, at least, a hard limit to her training. Eventually, she’d take it a step too far and she’d have no choice but to go back to bed. Not like working on the PC, where it felt all too easy to lose track of time and end up sitting there until morning.

Three uses of her unit remained her best. She hadn’t pushed it. Better to get used to using it three times than to aim for four and waste an evening. Night after night, she ran herself through different holograms, different scenarios. She built her tolerance until she could run two decently complex holograms in a row, with almost full control.

(She didn’t even vomit anymore, when she hit her limit. That was an improvement, too.)

CT panted, staggering slightly as she pulled off her helmet to take a swig of water. Two runs, two holograms in a row mimicking a high kick and a dodge, her third set that night. Her head was swimming, but it would settle.

She figured she could manage another set, before she was at the point where it wouldn’t. First, though, she needed to take a minute, or ten. Let her mind reset and hold back the other side effects for a little longer.

She sighed and her head fell back, sweaty hair catching on her face and obscuring her vision. With a huff she brushed it away— and froze.

There was a shadow in the viewing bay.

CT’s heart skipped a beat and she stiffened, statue-still. She blinked and the shadow was gone, the bay left dark but empty, no blacker-than-black silhouette carved into the air. No Director, no Counselor, just empty space.

And then a shimmer. Just for a split second, a shimmer.

Then nothing.

_Texas?_

CT waited for five minutes, ten, twenty, until she unfroze and snatched her helmet off the floor.

Training was over.

For three days, she avoided the floor and the deck. She only returned to the observation deck under the threat of missing her check-in with Needles if she didn’t. Missing that would only have caused more stress than the lingering sense of dread, of invisible eyes on the back of her skull, already did.

So, she acted like nothing was wrong and told Needles what she’d learned, what she’d pieced together since they’d last talked. She worked with Rat to gather the most up-to-date versions of every file they had. She buckled down and got on with it, but she watched the cameras more closely than she ever had and widened the radius of her warning system.

She needed to find the last piece of this puzzle, before someone, or something, caught up with her.


	17. Breaking Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/c25ccad4b841976c3d13e7e11157f98e/aa89f8ce5af2f997-9b/s640x960/bf4a86076fc5cb5bf331f300e8e444f5e9df8c7d.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

_BANG._

Connie jolted, her head falling from her hand and shooting up all at once. “Wha—? What was… York, was that really necessary?”

York grinned. There were small droplets of coffee pooled on the table around his mug and a wet patch on his hand, but he didn’t acknowledge it.

“You were falling asleep,” he said, gesturing so sharply that yet more coffee splashed over the sides. Connie blinked at him sleepily, which she supposed proved his point. “Though I’ll admit, I could have been gentler.”

“You think?” Connie said, rubbing her face. “You’ve lost half your coffee to slamming it on a table.”

“Then I better go get another cup,” he said, taking a swig. “You want some?”

Connie pulled a face. CT drank it, sometimes, when she really needed to wake up, but… Connie didn’t. Even if she really, _really_ needed to wake up.

“Right, no coffee. How about…” he snapped his fingers, “energy drink with added energy supplement? Totally not recommended by any doctor out there, but it sure helps beat off a poor night’s sleep.”

“That obvious?” Connie asked. York gave her a look. “Right. Falling asleep on the table. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Thank you.”

“No problem, CT,” York said, ruffling her hair.

Connie slapped his hand half-heartedly and buried her face back in her hands, letting out an incoherent grumble. York laughed under his breath as he walked away.

He returned a minute later with a brightly-coloured energy drink swirling with the tell-tale white patterns caused by the supplements. Connie snatched it from his hand and chugged it so quickly that even York’s eyes were wide with alarm when she stopped and wiped her mouth.

“Easy there, CT. I meant it when I said that wasn’t recommended by any doctor out there. We don’t need you having a heart attack.”

CT wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the first time she’d drank the concoction, that it wasn’t even the worst thing she’d mixed to wake herself up that _week_ , but Connie didn’t. She just smiled at him.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she said, idly shaking the empty bottle for the sound of the dregs against the plastic.

“What has you so wiped out, anyway?” York asked, sliding into the seat across from her. There were bandages around his arm. Connie must have stared too long, because York added, “Innie with the fancy knives got me. My gauntlet was already compromised, and I used it to block. Biiiig mistake.”

Girlie. Connie swallowed.

“Just working on stuff for the Director,” she said with a shrug. It was one of her patented not-lies. She’s stayed up relatively late doing her official work—she was, unfortunately, not able to get away with ignoring the duties assigned to her by Command—but it was the damn Beta file that had kept her awake until the early hours. “Top priority kind of stuff. You know what he’s like.”

“What kinda top priority stuff?”

“There’s a new facility on the radar. A research facility, supposedly; there’s been a lot of strange slipspace readings coming from the area and Command figures they might have some experimental teleportation technology there. Something that might help us with Louisiana’s unit, or… something,” Connie said, gesticulating vaguely.

“Louisiana’s unit uses slipspace tech?”

“That’s the implication.”

“Couldn’t that like… tear someone apart?”

“Yep.”

York pulled a face. “No, Delta, I _don’t_ want to know the odds of that actually happening, thank you. I— that’s telling me, D. You still told me.”

Connie bit the mouth of the bottle and sat back.

“I swear,” York said, with a roll of his eyes and a laugh, “it’s like he doesn’t know how to _stop_ running odds.”

 _No,_ Connie thought, _he probably doesn’t._

York continued to chatter at her in his York-like way, never content to let the air sit empty and silent, as he finished his coffee. Connie, still struggling not to fall asleep in her seat even as the energy supplements tried to kick in, just nodded along, smiling and making noises in the right places.

Finally, his band beeped at him and he left, with a friendly, “Duty calls!” and Connie was free to let her head fall against the table with a sharp _thunk_.

Only her own band beeping at her a few minutes later stopped her from passing out then and there.

“Pull yourself together,” she mumbled to herself, palms against her eyes. Then, emphasising each word with a smack of her hands against her forehead, “Pull. Yourself. _Together._ ”

She took a deep breath and left for the locker room.

Connie hit the ground and skidded backwards, armour grating against the metal floor and leaving brown streaks in its wake.

Falling onto her back, she groaned, looking up at the ceiling, only to flinch at the bright lights shining in her eyes. She threw her arm over her face, but the sound of the plating scraping against her helmet sent an unpleasant shiver through her, her skin raising in goosebumps. With a huff, she let the arm fall away and was steeling herself to move when the light was blocked and the figure standing above her offered her an arm.

After only a moment of hesitation, she took it and let North pull her to her feet.

“You okay?” North said. He didn’t let her arm go until he was sure she was steady. “That was quite a spill, I didn’t think I’d hit you that hard.”

He hadn’t. He hadn’t even struck a weak point. Connie had been distracted. False movement in the viewing bay. She could have sworn she’d seen something, but when she looked there was nothing there.

The third time in a single fight. Connie doubted any of the sightings were real, but that didn’t mean she could make herself stop checking.

“I’m fine,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “Let’s go again.”

“If you’re sure…” North said. Connie wasn’t sure if she imagined the patronising tone because she expected it, or if it was actually there. “You seem pretty off your game, CT.”

She was, but she wasn’t going to admit that.

“Less talk, more training,” she said, lunging at him.

North blocked the clumsy strike with ease, which set the tone for the rest of the round. Connie missed attacks she’d never usually miss; she took hits she’d never usually take. Hand-to-hand should have been her round. North was a sniper, not a CQC specialist; he was like Washington, that way. He could hold his own in close quarters, but, ideally, he wanted his enemy at the end of a gun, not his fists.

And yet where only a week ago, she’d beaten Washington with the same relative ease she always had, there she was, being thrown back to the floor for the second, then a _third_ time in a row by an agent who she should have defeated just as easily.

She’s gone for a kick where she should have dodged, and he’d taken out her remaining leg. Rookie mistake, really.

This time, she didn’t take the hand.

“Go take a break, CT,” North said, withdrawing the offer. “You’re clearly tired or otherwise distracted. We can call it here.”

CT bit her tongue and hauled herself up to her feet. “I’m _fine,_ North. I don’t need you babying me like—”

Something shifted in her periphery and Connie swallowed her nerves and her pride.

“…sorry,” she said. North just looked at her, concern radiating off of him. It shouldn’t have made her recoil, but it did. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I’ll go take an hour. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. Just go and get some rest,” he said, reaching out to pat her shoulder.

She flinched away and he dropped his hand, stepping back to let her leave.

Normally, she never would have considered it. Taking an unsanctioned break in the middle of the day was, obviously, frowned upon. But, as she slowly convinced herself, it wasn’t _suspicious._ It wouldn’t draw Command’s eye any more than any of the other minor infractions committed by agents on the daily did.

It would make her band go nuts and it would certainly not endear her any in the eyes of the Director, but what did she care about that? The upper ranks of the board hadn’t moved in months, not since Wyoming reached the position that he needed to get an AI. The Director had everyone exactly where he wanted them. One nap wouldn’t change that.

And, she thought as she forced herself to ignore another false shadow in the corner of her eye, she so _desperately_ needed a nap.

She de-suited, pulled on an old sweater of Maine’s from her locker, and made the trek back to the bunk, ignoring her band’s first warning beep. Activating the adapted TURNCOAT software was too risky during the day. However, if she was quick, it at least wouldn’t start beeping incessantly until she had abandoned it in her footlocker and was already on her way to the rec room, blanket and data-pad in hand.

She’d mistyped the code three times thanks to tired, clumsy fingers when a larger hand slipped past hers and typed it in instead. The door slid open.

Connie leaned back and South kissed her forehead.

“Hey mischief,” South said, brushing Connie’s hair behind her ear. Connie exhaled, leaning into the fleeting contact. “Aren’t you meant to be in the nerd centre or some shit right about now?”

Connie’s band beeped in agreement.

“Mmhm,” she mumbled, with a sigh. “Too tired though. I’m going to be rebellious and go and sleep in the rec room. So, if you come back here and just hear beeping, I’m not having another breakdown, promise. I just abandoned my band.”

“Sounds like a plan.” South stuck her foot in the door to stop it closing. “You know, if you sleep better in your own bed, I’m not gonna be offended if you—”

“It’s not that,” Connie interrupted, spinning around. “I _want_ to sleep next to you. I sleep _better_ next to you. It’s not even that big of a deal, last night I just had too many thoughts in my head. I’ll have a nap and I’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” South said, leaning down to kiss her. Connie met her part way, her eyes fluttering shut. A second too long and she’d have fallen asleep standing up. “C’mon, grab what you need, and I’ll make sure you make it down the fuckin’ hall. You look like you’re gonna fuckin’ pass out mid-step if left unattended.”

“Sleeping on the floor wouldn’t be _that_ bad,” Connie said, fiddling with the material of South’s shirt.

“Babe,” South said, giving her a look. “Yes, it fucking would be.”

“Yes, it would be. Alright,” Connie sighed, patting South’s chest as she let go of her shirt, “let me just remove this damn band before it starts screaming, grab my data-pad, a blanket and then… you can carry me.”

“Who said anything about carrying you?” South teased. Connie pouted. “Wow you really are tired if you’re breaking out the pout for that. Of course I’ll fuckin’ carry you, mischief.”

She did, scooping Connie up when she gathered what she needed and carrying her the short distance down the hall to the rec room. She left Connie there on the couch with a parting kiss and Connie watched her go, her heart heavy in her chest.

Not being able to explain to South what was wrong was killing her.

Connie pulled her blanket over her head and settled down, cushions piled against the arm of the chair and data-pad propped up so she could read it. Access to the Beta file still eluded her, but she’d made progress elsewhere. Multiple experiment logs and Omega’s profile were now open, and she had stripped down, encrypted versions of various files copied onto her data-pad for easy re-reading.

One of them might hold some piece of information that would help her crack it. Hopefully. Maybe.

…probably not. Still, she had to try.

Her eyes were already drooping when she started to read and by the end of the sentence, she knew she wasn’t going to be awake in a few words’ time. She was unconscious two syllables later, falling into a mercifully dreamless sleep that could only go part way to making up for the growing deficit.

She awoke to the sound of clinking cups a couple of hours later.

Connie groaned, stretching and pushing off her blanket. She flinched at the lights and rolled over, burying her face in the cushions with a disgruntled grumble.

Whoever was in the kitchenette continued to make noise, the clinking replaced by the sound of pouring liquid. It was probably York, coming to snatch a midday snack and a drink from the rec room’s unique stash. He’d be gone in a few minutes and she could go back to sleep.

She was already half-way there when someone perched on the arm of the chair.

“Ugh, go _away_ York,” Connie groaned, reaching above her head to push him off. Her hand landed on an armoured leg and she gave it an ineffectual shove.

“You know,” Carolina said, as Connie’s eyes widened, “you’re not really supposed to remove your communication band.”

Connie shot up, grabbing and covering her bare wrist. “Sorry, Carolina, I thought you were— well, York.”

“An understandable assumption,” Carolina said with a slow nod. She tossed Connie a water bottle and sipped her own extremely strong coffee. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”

“You’re… sorry?” Connie said, raising a brow. “Shouldn’t you be telling me to get up and get back to my schedule?”

“You don’t have a schedule, not today.”

The raised brow turned into furrowed brows. “I… don’t understand.”

“I cleared your schedule,” Carolina said. She was only in armour from the waist down, one boot propped on the worn-down coffee table. When Connie just blinked at her, she continued, “North told me you were having trouble on the floor and—”

Connie rolled her eyes. “Of course he did.”

“—I asked around a little. South mostly told me to, and I quote, ‘fuck off’, but she let me know where you were once I assured her I wasn’t going to ‘discipline’ you,” Carolina finished, giving Connie a firm, but not patronising, look. “How long has this been going on? I know you’ve been logging extra hours on the training floor—”

Connie almost choked on her water, but waved off Carolina’s concerned look with a, “Went down the wrong way,” that seemed to satisfy her.

“I’ve seen you down there, when I’ve come by to do the same,” Carolina said. She sat straight, her cup held in her lap. Her braid was falling apart where it fell over her shoulder. Somehow, even half-armoured and clearly fresh from the floor, she maintained a professional air. “Have you been struggling to sleep since that first time you caught me on the floor?”

That had been months ago. Seven months, give or take.

It had also been the night she’d found out about…

Connie took a swig of her drink. “No, don’t worry,” she lied. “This isn’t something like that. I just stayed up too late working, that’s all.”

“And the training?” Carolina tilted her head.

“We all have nights we can’t sleep, Carolina,” CT said, sharper than Connie would have liked. “We’re in the middle of an intergalactic war.”

Carolina opened her mouth, then closed it and nodded. “I’d tell you to watch your tone, but you’re right.”

 _How big of you to admit that,_ CT wanted to snark. Connie bit her tongue. Carolina still wasn’t the enemy, she just wasn’t an ally; she didn’t deserve her venom.

(No matter what Needles would say.)

“I don’t, however, think that this is all that is, CT. You’ve been off kilter for a while now; North isn’t the only one to notice. I understand that you’ve got a lot of work and that there’s a lot of pressure, especially since you became the sole true intelligence agent,” Carolina said. Connie sucked in a breath. “I know the Project can get intense, but you’ve been doing good work and I need you to keep that up. Which means I need you at your best.”

“I understand,” Connie said. She took another long drink, waiting to see if Carolina would say anything else. She didn’t, choosing instead to finish her own drink. “So… you said you cleared my schedule?”

Carolina nodded. “The day is yours to do with as you please. You’re no used to anyone sleep deprived, CT. I know you’ll finish your work; you don’t have to push yourself so hard.”

“No offense, Carolina, but that’s kind of rich coming from you,” Connie said, a slight smile on her lips. To her surprise, Carolina chuckled.

“I’ll let you have that one,” she said, “but my point stands. I’ve reduced your schedule for tomorrow too, to let you get some proper sleep. After that, it’s down to you.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it,” Connie said, and she did. Something had to give, eventually; if even Carolina, the boss, was telling her to take a break…

She had a free day, no schedule, no Project work. Who was she to turn down an opportunity like that?

“Take care of yourself, CT,” Carolina said, patting her on the shoulder. She stood up and placed her cup in the automatic dishwasher. As she went to leave, she stopped in the doorway and turned back to Connie to tap her band.

Connie’s fingers wrapped around the bare skin of her wrist and she nodded, jaw pulling taut.

When Carolina was gone, she grabbed her data-pad and told South to meet her in the rec room when she got a break.

Twenty minutes later, South was there, pushing down her data-pad so she’d stop reading.

“I can’t _believe_ the boss gave you fucking time off,” South said, falling back into the sofa. “I thought she was going to rat you out, not fucking be _nice.”_

“Apparently she’s in a good mood,” Connie said with a shrug.

“Fuckin’ apparently!” South threw her arms up. “Do you wanna go like, nap some more in an actual bed?”

“No, I want…” What did she want? “I want to have some fun. With you. How would you like to go to the shooting range and test out a bunch of the alien guns we’re still not allowed to use in the field?”

Mischief lit up South’s eyes. “ _Fuck_ yeah, that sounds fucking amazing.”

“How long’s your break?”

“However the fuck long I want it to be if I ignore the stupid band. Or switch my gym session to shooting range. That comes with less annoying beeping.”

“Less annoying beeping is always preferable,” Connie said, kissing her on the cheek. “Do that. Then let’s go melt some target dummies with plasma.”

South grinned.

After a quick detour to retrieve Connie’s thankfully silent band and a not-so-quick stop in the locker room, they were in the shooting range, with a whole rack of requisitioned alien weaponry free for their perusal.

South immediately grabbed the biggest gun she could, a burnished orange contraption built of all the usual smooth, alien shapes associated with the Covenant. At least a metre long and bulky, she braced it against her shoulder and flashed Connie a grin before she pulled her helmet on.

“Do you even know what that does?” Connie asked.

“Nope,” South said, lips popping on the P, as she fired.

A concentrated bolt of plasma burst from the rifle and _slammed_ into the target dummy, obliterating it and sending the debris flying in all directions. The concussive wave hit a second later, the pieces scattering and being reduced into even smaller chunks.

South looked at the carnage, then at the gun, and back again.

“ _Wow,_ okay, I thought this shit _melted_ stuff, not blew it to high hell,” South said. “That was fucking _awesome._ Why don’t they let us use this shit in the field?”

“Carolina takes her plasma rifles out,” Connie said, picking one up and waving it.

“Yeah, well that’s because she’s fuckin’ Carolina,” South said, hitting the button to reset the lane. The scoreboard on the wall automatically updated and South huffed. “Ugh. Can you like— do your thing, and turn that off? I don’t wanna think about fucking numbers right now.”

“Sure,” Connie said, attaching the rifle to her hip, “give me a second.”

Blocking South’s view of the terminal with her body, she slipped the drive she used on the training floor from her ammo pouch. Once inserted, it shut down the scoring algorithms and made sure that F.I.L.S.S. wouldn’t pay them too much attention.

“There,” she said. “No scores.”

“Fucking beautiful. C’mere,” South beckoned her over, “try that thing out.”

“This gun,” Connie said, positioning herself in the lane, “was not designed for someone as small as I am.”

“How about I act as a brace for you then?” South said, sidling up behind her, hands finding their place on her waist. Connie pressed back into her, adjusting her stance. “That work?”

“That works,” Connie said, smiling.

She had just pulled the trigger when the door slid open and Washington stepped in, pausing briefly at the doorway. Connie could imagine him blinking stupidly at them behind his helmet.

“I didn’t realise anyone else had the range booked,” he said, snapping out of it. “Also, be careful with that thing. They overheat quickly.”

“Technically, we didn’t,” Connie said. Plasma tore through the target ahead of her, its torso melting outwards from the holes the concentrated energy left. There was less recoil than she’d expected. “Carolina gave me the rest of the day off. South switched her self-select to the shooting range so we could have some fun.”

South squeezed her waist. “Turned off the scoreboard, so if you’ve got a problem with that, rookie, you can fuck off.”

“ _Still_ with the—?” Wash sighed, stopping himself. It wasn’t a battle he’d win. “Anyway, no, I don’t have a problem with that. I’m only here to get in my allotted training hours, as long as my band registers I’m here, I’m fine.”

Connie felt his eyes on her and rolled her own. “No, I didn’t block the bands. You’re fine,” she said, adjusting her hold on the rifle and firing again. Sticking her tongue out and closing an eye, she aimed at the head and delighted a little bit too much in the way it melted slowly into an unrecognisable lump.

“You really should let up on that trigger,” Wash said, taking aim in the lane next to her. He was only wielding a standard assault rifle. Boring.

“And _you_ should really get a cooler gun,” Connie said, not letting up on that trigger at all. Seconds later, the metal began to heat under her hands and she hissed, dropping it. “ _Ow_.”

“Maybe _you_ should have picked a _cooler_ gun,” Wash said.

“If you weren’t holding a rifle right now, I’d elbow you,” Connie said. “Right between the ribs. Right in there. Just for that terrible pun.”

“Good thing I’m holding a rifle then.”

“Seriously though, Wash; don’t be boring, get something fun, like… oh, this!” Connie slipped out of South’s hold to grab a purple gun loaded with pink, crystalline projectiles.

“Those needles explode if you impale something with three in a short period of time,” Wash said, taking it from her and looking it over. “I guess that does make it pretty cool.”

“Not when you get fuckin shot with it, seen guys lose an arm to that thing, but yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ cool to wield,” South said, shrugging.

“For once, you two know more about something than I do,” Connie teased. Picking up one of the less flashy weapons, an extremely heavy but utilitarian thing with a blade attached to the underside, she asked, “What’s this?”

“Spiker,” Wash said. “Brutes use them. It fires spikes made of superheated tungsten alloy, is fully automatic, and if you tried to fire one-handed like they do, the recoil would probably break your arm. Though, the armour might compensate enough? I can’t imagine they’d leave it out for use if it’d do that, but… well.”

He shrugged. Connie couldn’t say that she shared the same optimism.

“Now _that_ sounds like my kind of gun,” South said, taking it from Connie.

The next target to be loaded into the lane was impaled by almost half a magazine of tungsten spikes, South’s aim sure and steady. Its head looked like a giant pincushion.

South stepped back and admired it, hands on her hips. “Fucking beautiful.”

“What other guns do you know things about, Wash?” Connie asked, tilting her head.

He stood a little straighter and even with his helmet on, she knew the flash of excitement that hid beneath it well; an invitation to info-dump was _always_ appreciated, and he wasted no time in jumping on it.

“Okay, so,” he grabbed another long, unusually shaped purple rifle from the rack and passed the needler off to Connie, “this is a Covenant carbine. Recoil-operated, charger-fed, semi-automatic. Instead of plasma, it actually uses caseless radioactive projectiles that remain more stable than plasma over long distances, and—”

Washington was every bit the weapons guy; he knew the specifications of even the Covenant armoury in more detail than some agents on the ship knew the ins-and-outs of their own rifles. He talked them through the guns they had available, through every known detail of their operation. Even when South or Connie, more interested in having fun than playing it safe, mishandled them and ignored his squeaking protests.

South was laughing, taking such glee in destroying target after target with pieces of the Covenant’s brutal arsenal. Connie found herself letting her grip on her weapons go slack, in favour of watching South, instead.

“ _Look at me,_ ” South said, voice morphed into North’s and a particularly large Covenant sniper rifle in her hands, “ _I have a big, fuck-off gun with a mile-long range because I can’t perform with my fists alone. In fact, punching someone would probably break my hand! Because I’m a weenie._ ”

“Who _gave_ you that voice modulator?” Wash said. “And what did the rest of us do to them to deserve it?”

“ _Deal with it, dickbite,_ ” South said, voice now a perfect mimicry of Wash’s.

Wash shuddered, then, “…dickbite?”

“It’s not her worst,” Connie said, not bothering to hide her amusement, “by a long shot. You’ve _heard_ worse off her.”

“And I’m never any more ready for them.”

“Good,” South said, staring down the sight. “That’s what makes it fun.”

A concentrated beam of energy burst from the rifle and obliterated the target’s head. South lowered the gun and leaned back, satisfied.

“Fucking. _Beautiful._ ”

By the time they were done, Connie felt sorry for the poor maintenance staff that had to deal with the frankly terrifying number of destroyed targets they left in their wake.

For the first time in weeks, maybe more, Connie was bouncing on her toes as they left and South was grinning at her, helmet under her arm. Washington had to leave quickly, heading to an allotted session on the floor, but with a little more time to spare South lingered.

“You gonna do what the boss fuckin’ told you to and keep relaxing if I leave you unsupervised?” she asked, brushing Connie’s hair behind her ear. Her fingertip grazed a line around the shell of her ear and Connie exhaled, sagging into the touch.

“Yes, I will,” Connie said, turning her head to kiss South’s kevlar-covered palm. It was rough against her lips. “I promise. I’ll relax.”

“Promise?” South said, cocking her head. “Think you can make it through a couple of days without waking up looking like the living fuckin’ dead because you got two hours sleep or some shit?”

“Now, I didn’t say anything about a couple of days,” Connie said, injecting as much teasing energy as she could muster, but still feeling like the statement rang too true. South gave her a look. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’ll try. Let’s start with today, alright?”

“Alright, you little workaholic,” South said. She stole a kiss and bumped their foreheads together. “I better go before this fuckin’ band ruins the moment. I expect to find you comfortable in bed when I finish today, you hear me?”

“I hear you. Go. I’ll be in bed, comfortable and waiting,” Connie said, tapping her on the nose.

South still seemed reluctant to leave her unattended, but Connie waved her off and smiled to calm her concern.

Even though the smile faltered when she looked away.

Connie did what she was told. She went back to her bunk and she stayed there. She changed into comfortable, compression leggings that made her fraying nerves settle in seconds and one of South’s purple hoodies, much too large on her but soft and smelling like South. She tucked herself up in the corner of the bed, pillows around her, and she fought the urge to pull up those files on her data-pad and spend her day off reading reports of psychological abuse and torture that were part of her problem in the first place.

When she automatically went to open them for the third time, she ripped open her footlocker and shoved the data-pad inside.

She had to take a break, for more than just a few hours. She owed that much to South, it was the one promise she stood a chance at keeping.

Maybe it’d be good for her. Maybe, if she took some time off it all, just for a few days, she’d be able to come back with fresher eyes and finally make it through the damn encryption on the Beta file.

Connie hadn’t relaxed as much as she had in the shooting range for _weeks._ She missed that. She missed spending time with South and Wash that wasn’t filled with underlying anxiety and secrets that died on the tip of her tongue every time she opened her mouth.

Connie needed to recharge. What was two, three days in a process that had taken months?

So, she relaxed. She plucked South’s data-pad from where she’d left it on the bedside and she found a book to read, some romance novel South had bought based on a title that did not fit the contents. She nestled herself into a nest of blankets and pillows and she read the story of two women falling in love. It wasn’t something she’d have picked up independently, but it was light-hearted. It made a little part of her feel warmer.

And when the daily scheduled hours were coming to a close, when South was due back any minute, she stripped off those leggings and stretched out on the bed, letting the hoodie ride up to her hips. And when South arrived, she smiled at her and waggled her eyebrows with a goofy, inviting smile and South grinned back.

They kissed and they fucked and they curled up together, bare and vulnerable, and for the first time in weeks Connie felt like herself. Even more so, when she provoked South to laughter by insisting on sitting up, still naked, to start cleaning her knives—returning to a routine she’d barely allowed herself, recently.

She didn’t expect it to last, but she’d take it whilst she had it.

CT wouldn’t be needed, at least for a little while.

Sleeping through the night shouldn’t have been an achievement, but it was.

No silent alarms set in the back of her mind to wake her up in the early hours, and no pressing need to work gnawing at her skull waking her even without it. Somehow, tangled up in South’s arms and with permission to relax, she let it go, if only for a night or two.

Her reduced schedule helped, the first day. She could lie in late, disturbed only briefly by South clambering out of bed and tucking her back in. She could take her time to eat a proper meal, a full breakfast and a drink that wasn’t laced with supplements to keep her functioning. She could even take a proper shower, luxuriate under the warm water whilst no one else was around and let the lingering aches melt away.

Afterwards, as she combed her wet hair and fought to make the uncooperative pieces stay on the right side, her fingers brushed against the cropped hair that had started to grow out. Neglected.

Chewing her lip, she dug out the clippers and started to shave it.

Maine walked in when she was running her fingers back over it to test the length and Connie beckoned them over.

“Hey big guy, does this look even to you?” she asked, looking back in the mirror. They came over, only their chest appearing in the reflection until they leaned down.

They grunted and nodded.

“Thank yooou,” she said, with a hint of singsong.

Maine took their place at the next mirror over and examined their own head, fingers skirting over their scars on the way. Connie hip-checked them and pretended she didn’t, though she didn’t pretend she wasn’t smiling.

Chewing her lip again, trailing her fingers through the shaved hair, she raised the clippers again and shaved a pattern into it. Simple, geometric lines—a little asymmetrical and messy, but that didn’t matter.

“There,” she said, setting the clippers down. “Thank god for the lax hair regulations, huh big guy?”

Maine raised a brow and gestured at their regulation buzz. Connie giggled.

“Right. Oops.”

All that was on her schedule for the day was her daily training, a short stint in the Intelligence Centre, and a gym session. Left with almost too much free time, she filled the gaps with self-selects and scheduled herself time in the rec room to relax, with South’s stolen data-pad and their still-unchanged selection of movies.

They _did_ have a movie night coming up that week, and she eyed the list during her second break of the day. Maybe there was something on Mass’s computer she could bring and just pretend she’d downloaded it illicitly.

It all passed so quickly. She stayed ahead of schedule and her band didn’t beep once. She took a nap; she read another of South’s books; she beat her personal bests in the gym. Her command-assigned work was a breeze. Withholding information wasn’t a tactic to slow the Project down, it was a tactic to make her work appear like it was taking as long as it used to. Her training was routine, and she only looked towards the viewing bay once.

To her relief, there was actual movement. The Director, swinging by to pick something up he’d left behind.

She wasted the evening away with South, gorging themselves on commissary snacks and smuggled alcohol. Trying to have sex but laughing too much, and then realising they were the wrong kind of tipsy to get anything done.

So instead, they laid on a pile of blankets on the floor and South traced her fingers along the new lines in Connie’s hair, fingernail dragging against the exposed skin of her scalp, and Connie melted.

They talked and laughed, told old stories where the Project couldn’t slap their wrists for sharing details about a past it wanted to claim and erase. The air was easier than it had been in so long and whilst a part of Connie knew it couldn’t last, that only made it more precious.

“We used to trick the guys on our squad all the time. ODST armour all looks the same, y’know? We customised but it’s not hard to swap a few pieces, switch a decal, whatever,” South said, her voice soft in the way it only ever was for Connie. “You’d think elite fuckin’ soldiers would’ve had a better track record figuring it out than an underpaid teacher in an understaffed school on some backwater colony, but nope. Just as easy to fool. Fucking idiots.”

“What did you even fool them _for?_ ”

“Fun and profit. Literally, I stole North’s bet and poker money from people. And made them think he was a dickhead—which he was, following me all the way to the Helljumpers. And to find out if the hot corporal had the hots for me.”

She laughed, though there was an edge to it.

“Shame it all went to hell, but it’s in the name isn’t it? Helljumpers. All goes that way eventually,” she said, kissing Connie’s forehead.

Connie drew spirals up the dip of her spine and bit her lip. “Good times before, though?”

“Yeah,” South said. “Good times.” She paused. “…got a mission tomorrow. Dropping us in from orbit. You gonna remember to relax whilst I’m gone?”

“I’ll try,” Connie said, fingertip reaching and then retreating from the space between her shoulder blades. Following the path of the drop pod inked into her spine. “You okay with that? Dropping in?”

“I’m not Virginia. Done it before since we got here, just not often, cause, y’know, the bastard loves to make me run stealth. But— ugh, let’s not talk about this. It’s relaxing time, not moping time,” South huffed. “Tell me a stupid story.”

“I once inhaled a marble.”

South stared at her. Blinked. And then she burst out laughing, tucking Connie closer to her chest and muffling herself in her hair.

“I was like, five,” Connie laughed, wiggling her head free from her chest so that her chin rested on her shoulder, “and I remember this as my brother daring me, but he claims he never did. Stupidest hospital trip we ever took. That marble sat on our shelf for years. Always made us laugh.”

“Kids are so fuckin’ stupid,” South said, laughter reduced to a slightly breathless snicker. “North was extra stupid. There was this time when—”

They fell asleep on the floor, tangled up together in a heap.

Day three saw her schedule return to normal. Well-rested and having wished South good luck on her mission that morning, Connie had little trouble falling back into her usual routine—her work, her training, her study time. So much so that it became harder to remember that she was supposed to be relaxing and not touching her secret work at all.

During the day, her data-pad being locked away in her bunk and the strict schedule kept her focused. However, as evening came around and South had yet to return from her drop, Connie could feel the itch beneath her skin growing. She was alone. She could get in a few hours of work before South was likely to arrive back on the _Invention._ She could read or try cracking the Beta file again. Three days was enough of a break, right?

She slapped the thoughts aside as best as she could and occupied her hands with her beads and knives, rolling and cleaning them respectively. She read, but her eyes kept drifting away from the screen to her footlocker.

She was about ready to drag herself from the bed and see if anyone was in the rec room when another thought came to her.

Connie knocked on Wash’s door and said, “Let’s go skateboard.”

Wash stared back at her with a bewildered face and blinked. “…okay, where?”

They went to the hangar. Wash threw down his skateboard and tried to remember how to use it whilst Connie laughed at him wobbling, struggling to maintain his balance. He got there, eventually, only to crash into the side of a Pelican seconds later when he got distracted, waving at Connie and saying:

“Look, I did it!” with a goofy smile on his face, that was wiped away by the impact.

Connie burst out laughing and he huffed at her, dragging her down onto the floor when she offered him a hand. They play-fought until the skateboard was knocked and sent rolling at top speed across the hangar floor, forcing them to run after it before someone tripped or, _worse_ , it scuffed Niner’s paintjob.

He tried to teach her, after that. Barely capable of riding the board himself, he taught her the theory of keeping her balance and watched with wide eyes as she showed him up, giggling all the while.

“Maybe it’s my different centre of gravity,” she teased, rolling in a slightly wobbly circle around him. Wash folded his arms but couldn’t keep the annoyed look on his face for more than a second at a time.

Wash pushed her off, after a while, and she cheered him on as he mastered his balance fuelled by playful spite alone. He zipped around the hangar, taking a spill several times but weaving between the ships, nonetheless. He even succeeded in coming to a dead stop, board kicked up into his waiting hand, with a look on his face that said—

“I didn’t think that’d work.”

“Can you do any actual tricks?” Connie asked, cocking her head to the side.

“I used to be able to, but as we’ve just seen, ‘used to’ doesn’t mean a lot,” Wash said, dropping the board back to the floor and stepping back on. He rolled from side to side, testing his balance and control. “I might be able to do something simple without falling on my face _too_ much.” A beat. “Is this a scheme to just make me fall over as many times as possible?”

“No, you dumbass, it’s a scheme to have some _fun,_ ” Connie said, playfully shoving his shoulder. Somehow, he managed to stay on the board—though it was a close thing. “And… maybe to stop myself from doing work, because I promised South I wouldn’t, and I could _feel_ myself going crazy up there trying not to.”

“I see,” Wash said, and for one terrible moment Connie thought the look on his face meant he was going to jump off the board and walk away, but he didn’t. Instead, the look faded into a smile. “Then let’s have some fun.”

He showed her something called an ‘ollie’, kicking the board up into a diagonal and jumping, or at least that was the theory. He kept losing his balance and falling on his ass, rather than his face, when he misjudged his own momentum. Connie cheered him on again, until he _finally_ pulled it off. The simplest of tricks, forgotten with time and relearned with a little bit of determination.

“Do another!” she called, hands cupped around her mouth like a megaphone.

Wash deadpanned, “CT, my ass is going to bruise if I do anything more complicated.”

“Do I look like I care about your ass, Washington?” she said, hands on her hips. “I’m sure it can take it. You’re dating _Maine._ ”

Washington’s face turned the brightest shade of red she’d ever seen, and she almost choked to death laughing, rolling on the ground. It wasn’t even that funny, but…

God, she had missed this. There had been other nights like this, in the past; nights where South or Maine hadn’t come back from a mission yet and one of them was so jittery with worry that they needed a distraction. The last time must have been months ago, before the tension between them had grown too thick to push through.

They’d risen above it, for now, but she could feel it swirling around their ankles. Waiting.

She ignored it. It couldn’t reach her on the skateboard.

Washington spent the next hour trying to teach her that basic trick, rather than caving and giving her a show by trying something more complex himself. He caught her when she tripped; he lifted her back onto the board as she giggled and told him to put her down; he teased her and encouraged her until she managed that one, simple trick and they _laughed_.

The hangar was quiet, but alive. People passed by them and paused, just for a few seconds, to watch the strange spectacle that two agents from the top squad rolling around on a skateboard like a couple of teenagers was. Niner even appeared at the foot of her bird’s ramp to roll her eyes exaggeratedly at them, when Connie zipped past with a ridiculous ‘woot!’.

The Project’s operations continued around them, whilst they lingered in a bubble, separate from it all. Connie was only vaguely aware of one of the Pelicans being kitted out and deployed, or of the fact that the door that lead to the drop pod deployment chamber was marked ‘active’ when she first passed by, and ‘inactive’ the next.

Soon enough it was past 2300 hours, there was still no sign of South, and Connie had yawned one too many times.

“Come on,” Wash said, tucking the skateboard under his arm. “We should get back. South wouldn’t want you staying up too late.”

“South would be _keeping_ me up this late,” Connie corrected, though it was only half-true. Wash gave her a look. “Okay, okay, we can head back. But…” Connie’s teeth worried her lip and she shifted on her face, “can you stay with me a little longer? I don’t want to work.”

And if she were left alone, she knew she would.

Wash rolled his eyes, but it was a soft thing. A smile tugged at his lips and he beckoned her over, holding out an arm for her to tuck herself under.

She accepted it without hesitation.

They sat on the floor of her bunk, backs pressed to the walls, and revisited their old game, droplet pong, as they talked. Droplets smacked them in the forehead, the cheek, the chin. One even caught Wash in the eye, and they had to stop for five minutes both to check he was okay, and to laugh.

Wash told her stories about the little things that she didn’t even realise she’d missed. Things like Maine, signing harmless nonsense to Wash in the mess hall in full view of York who understood only the most basic USL and grew convinced that they were shit-talking people. Or like Delta spitting out nonsense probabilities at the slightest provocation from anyone, including, once, the probability that York would put his foot in his mouth when talking to Carolina.

“So, most of these stories are about you tormenting York?” Connie said, tossing another droplet across the room.

Wash caught it in his mouth and fist-pumped the air, only to cringe seconds later when the burning set in. “Yep,” he said, face contorting even as he spoke. “In my defence, he started it.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second.”

“That reminds me,” Wash said, swallowing. “I need York’s locker code.”

“…I’d say I don’t have it, but you’d never believe me, would you?”

“Nope,” Wash said with a grinning.

“…it’s 15082006.”

“Thank you, I promise to use it for great evil.”

Another droplet smacked him on the tip of the nose and Connie hid behind a pillow as he returned fire.

They went through a whole bag of droplets that left them with a burning, bitter aftertaste that didn’t go away. Gathering up the pile of blankets and pillows that had never gotten put away the night before, they huddled on the floor and tried to wait.

Until, finally, a little after 0100 hours, sleep won out.

Connie was awoken hours later by the sound of the door and an amused little chuckle that sounded as tired as she felt, half-stirred as she was. South fumbled about in the dark until her foot caught on Washington’s side and woke him up, too—though Connie wasn’t sure if that was because of the kick or the stream of curses that followed it.

There was a hushed argument, whispers that Connie couldn’t make out that culminated in Wash dragging himself from the floor and leaving. The warmth at Connie’s side vanished with him and she grumbled, sleepily, rolling onto her back and squinting through the darkness.

“I was _comfortable_ ,” she said, pouting.

“I know, I know,” South said. Something thudded against the wall and landed on the bed to Connie’s left. South lay down beside her, tucking herself into the void that Wash left behind. “Better?”

Connie pressed her face into South’s chest and inhaled. She stank of sweat and metal, but Connie didn’t care. “Mmhm.”

Silence fell back over the room. Fingers laced themselves into Connie’s hair and she was almost asleep again when South spoke up, shattering more than just the quiet with a single sentence:

“Texas was on the fucking mission.”

“What?” Connie mumbled, lifting her head from her chest. “What happened?”

“The intel was outdated,” South said, fingers still running through Connie’s hair. “We dropped in and found a compound three times the fucking size we thought we’d find, with artillery and big, fuck-off guns and— ugh, that’s the same thing. What _happened_ was we got dropped into a fucking Innie war zone and when we didn’t clean up fast enough, they sent in the bitch in black.”

Connie’s brow furrowed. “Oh.”

South sighed. “Go back to sleep, mischief. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“S’okay,” Connie said, clinging onto South as tightly as she could. Not just because she needed the warmth and comfort, but because she knew that if she let go, she’d be out of the door the second South fell asleep.

She could make it one more night. She promised South, so she would.

Even if it felt like leaving an itch unscratched. She had to.

In the end, what broke the dam was an honest attempt to patch it up. Connie told herself that it would be okay, if she went down to the deck to try and find a new movie for them to watch amongst the personal files on Mass’s PC. She told herself that she’d only stay long enough to check and if she found nothing, she’d leave and make it to the movie night on time.

CT had other ideas.

One second she was searching for movies, the next she’d set up her protections and was taking a dive into Agent Texas’ mission reports.

She found exactly what she expected to find: that Agent Texas had been tacked onto almost every mission since her arrival, plus a none too insignificant number _before_. Deus-ex-Carolina had nothing on Texas. She was a back-up plan, a clean-up crew. She came in when the Director wasn’t satisfied with the results or when his endgame involved something illegal, something he wouldn’t trust anyone else to do.

Bombs or transmitters planted in UNSC facilities certainly fit that bill.

Her own, private missions were encrypted separately, with an encryption that seemed familiar, but that CT didn’t have the time to analyse or crack before Connie caught sight of the time and it became a rush to pack up and leave.

She’d missed the start of the movie night by over an hour. The movie, another repeat, was already half-way done.

“I’m sorry,” she said, half-whispering, as she clambered onto the sofa besides South. South raised her arm and dropped it around her shoulders when she settled. “I was trying to find us another movie and I lost track of time and—”

“Mischief, it’s okay,” South said, “barely anyone’s here anyway.”

For the first time, Connie surveyed the room. It was just her, South and York, who was either asleep or having an internal conversation neither of them were privy to, unfinished puzzle cube on his chest.

“Only stuck around to wait for you.” South rubbed her shoulder. “You wanna stay and watch this shit again, or just go to bed?”

Connie glanced at York and sighed. “Bed, I guess.”

South carried her to bed.

South carried her to bed and she held her, arms around her waist squeezing her to her chest and her face buried in Connie’s hair… and CT didn’t even make it to 0100 hours before she dragged herself free and went back to the observation deck.

The dam was broken and the reservoir began to drain.

One of the earliest journals and the earliest experiment logs referenced a ‘spontaneous, stand-alone by-product’ that was never elaborated on. CT had connected it to Beta early on in the targeted assault on the Beta file; after all, the Beta AI was the first. The Beta AI was the _start_.

The known AI were all stand-alone by-products, but they weren’t spontaneous. Their creation had been inspired _by_ something: another separate event tied to the title ‘Beta’.

Unfortunately, that knowledge didn’t help her break an encryption. What it did do, however, was keep her focused.

 _This_ was the final piece; the piece that would make the whole picture make sense.

She just had to find it.

The break had done its job. Her eyes were fresher, her mind clearer, when she sat there in front of Mass’s PC with all of her gear. There would be no company that night. Her scheduled check-in was the next day and she needed something, _anything_ , to give them.

No, not just anything. She needed the Beta file open. She wouldn’t settle for less.

CT had already succeeded in brute forcing the first layer of encryption that the Beta file had been so neatly wrapped up in. It had taken not only days, but also a calculated risk of leaving the PC active in the vent throughout the day so that it could keep working. It was a victory, but she hadn’t the time to celebrate it; the second level had unfolded before her and all she could do was groan, then get back to work.

She had adjusted her software and that second layer had taken more days and more calculated risks to break through, but it fell apart in time. CT had hoped, against all odds, that it would be the last layer between her and the information she needed. Instead, she’d found another, final level of encryption that she had been ramming her head against ever since.

It was a brick wall, standing between her and what she needed to know.

Perhaps the worst part was that it was, on the surface, a much less secure type of encryption than those once piled atop of it. It was a password prompt, a glorified goddamn cipher—enter the correct key and the jumbled content in front of her would become readable. It wasn’t complex, or at least it shouldn’t have been. Her software should have been capable of finding a way around and, with time, one day it would have.

Time was, of course, something she would run out of eventually.

More than that, she was worried about the consequences of too many failures. Her software could try thousands of keys, but a defence so simple would never allow it. It was a strange little side effect of the ever-advancing nature of cybersecurity; sometimes, you forgot how to handle the basics that were supposed to be long outdated.

Alpha’s file had relied on a similar final line of defence, but the Director hadn’t been so careful with him. There was information outside of the Alpha’s file that provided the clues she needed to enter the correct password. For Beta, no such clues existed.

Or maybe she just hadn’t—

A sharp beeping startled her from her thoughts and CT scrambled to check the cameras, her heart pounding in her chest— but found only Florida, passing by one of the adjoining corridors, out of armour and already walking away.

CT buried her face in her hands and remembered how to breathe.

Not Texas. Not fucking Texas.

Wait. _Texas_.

The encryption on her solo mission reports had seemed familiar. CT pulled the files back up and, just to see, she ran her software—adjusted perfectly for the exact type of encryption used on the top layer of the Beta file. It was a longshot. It was entirely possible that she was seeing a similarity where it didn’t exist, that she was growing once again to the point of desperation that had resulted in her trying ‘password’ the last time she’d worked on it, just in case.

Only, she _wasn’t_. Her hunch was right—the same decryption protocols _worked_. The mission report opened up in front of her, but CT didn’t need to read more than the first line to confirm what she’d discovered. The file itself was unimportant, but the implications…

“No way…” CT mumbled, suddenly feeling as if the air had been pulled from her lungs.

Agent Texas had always been an anomaly. Not just a late arrival, but one that had been aboard the _Invention_ for much longer than Command would have the other agents believe. She had been working behind the scenes for months and always, without fail, disappeared at exactly the right moment to avoid any uncomfortable questions. She never interacted with the team, with such consistency that it was as if she’d been ordered not to. She’d been placed at number one and yet she was almost never seen training. She had _sparked._

She had Omega. She _knew_ Omega was doing work with the Director.

Agent Texas was the favourite. Agent Texas was _different._

CT pulled up the Beta file and adjusted for manual input.

‘Texas’ didn’t work and she cursed herself for trying it. It was too simple. Her agent title was public knowledge, it would be the first thing anyone who made the connection would go to.

The information in her personnel file, however, wasn’t.

Easily accessible for someone like her, the file was so simple as to be easily dismissed. CT _had_ dismissed it, several times over; there was no information in there that had told her who Texas was to the Director, but for this that was almost the point.

Something hidden not quite in plain sight, but somewhere so innocuous as to be passed over by even the most seasoned of eyes.

<Name: Allison McCallister _>_

Taking a deep breath, CT typed in: Allison.

The seconds between her hitting enter and the decryption processing felt like _hours,_ but there it was. Just like that, the Beta file unlocked and for a brief moment, CT’s hands flapped rapidly in the air.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. That worked. That—”

CT swallowed, pinning her hands beneath her legs and forcing herself to breathe. In… out. In… out.

The report was thick with jargon and excess detail, detail that CT would have to examine in time but that bore no relevance in the moment. There was a video file and photos of a woman that looked strikingly similar to Texas, if a little to the left. A little less _perfect_.

<Emotional Core: Full AI, Spontaneous Byproduct (See Journal)>

Attached was that journal, another voice log by the Director.

The video file was an unremarkable home video. A young woman sent off to war like so many others, who didn’t want to miss her ship out and a silent young man called Leonard, who didn’t want to say goodbye.

Director Leonard Church, who knows how many years ago.

She was his wife. The file told a story of a woman sent off to war who had never returned, her body lost to the ravages of a conflict so much deadlier than anyone could ever have predicted. She was an early casualty, lost within the first two years of the Great War that had now lasted almost twenty-five. She was a mother and a soldier and she was dead, though the way the Director spoke of her suggested he’d never quite accepted that last part.

His theory was that her forefront presence in his mind had caused a uniquely intense memory transfer between him and the AI that had been created from his brain scan—the Alpha. Alpha had claimed that he had created the Beta AI to be a companion, both to keep him company and to help him; created of his own code, but a separate, distinct person. A spontaneous, stand-alone byproduct, unique in the world of AI theory.

Beta’s existence should have been impossible. Had the Alpha been created traditionally, it likely would have _remained_ impossible. The Director’s new method, however, was untested. The AI were unique. Unprecedented.

The Director saw that woman in Beta. Whether what he saw was truly there, CT couldn’t say, but it had motivated what had followed regardless. Beta had been separated from Alpha under the guise of study and ensuring Alpha’s continued functionality. They had torn the two interconnected AI apart and it was _that_ incident that created the fragmentation process that the Director would soon after learn how to manipulate.

Alpha was isolated, left to recover.

Agent Texas was born in the _Mother of Invention’s_ shadows days later. Placed into a highly sophisticated android body, built to house an AI who didn’t know she was an AI. An AI who thought she was human and, to the best of her programming’s ability, behaved as such.

Agent Texas was more than a _part_ of Project Freelancer’s crimes.

She was a _result_ of them.


	18. Beta Test

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover Art for the Chapter](https://64.media.tumblr.com/7bdd7a86db7d816080cd70f5185e8590/b77f99ab4f585d3b-db/s640x960/aa891c79626f77983aa6fca4d1354a4da01f43cf.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro.

The strangest part about every new revelation was waking up the morning after feeling like everything was different, only for the world around her to remain functionally the same.

Agent Texas was an AI. That one fact changed _everything_ and yet Connie still had to drag herself out of bed, chat idly with South and the people at her mess hall table, then get to work as if nothing had changed at all.

After so long, she expected to become used to the dissonance, but, every time it happened, she found she hadn’t.

She spent the day working on the research facility intel, no longer able to keep pushing back the inevitable assault Alpha would be undertaking. In the evening, she warned Needles and Rat that they would be coming in a matter of days and then she told them about Texas, as frankly as she could.

Their disbelief was no surprise, but even they couldn’t deny the evidence she presented.

Agent Texas was an AI.

 _Agent Texas_ was an _AI._

It still made Connie’s head spin. An AI who thought she was human. The isolation and manipulation required to uphold that façade was as impressive as it was sickening. CT had already found records of regular maintenance sessions disguised as debriefings which allowed them to keep an eye on Texas’s memories as well as her robotic body.

Texas was a woman under all-but constant surveillance and pressure from above, all of which was disguised under the pretence that she was a special operative who required special treatment.

In light of that realisation, that she was under strict orders to keep Omega and her special status a secret, all of her previous behaviour made sense, right down to the way she had stalked CT. Texas couldn’t be sure that CT hadn’t heard her, so she made sure she didn’t tell anyone. CT could understand that.

Keeping secrets was hard and she, at least, had someone to talk to. Texas didn’t even have that.

With all of that knowledge swirling around her head like a tornado crashing through buildings, she got up on the morning of the mission and continued to pretend that everything was normal.

“You know what we’re getting dropped into?” South asked, quickly brushing her teeth in the wet room. “Like— the fuck are we doing?”

“You’re going to hate it,” Connie said, as she pulled on her sports bra. “Or at least, you’ll hate the start. We’re infiltrating a research facility. Apparently, they have some teleportation technology on top of some other interesting, experimental or alien stuff. The usual. The Director wants it all.”

“That fucker loves his toys as much as he hates fuckin’ sharing them,” South said. She spat into the sink. “Know if we’re going to have any sudden surprises?”

Connie’s stopped still, with her arms half-way into her shirt. Telling her that Texas was, once again, assigned as emergency back-up and the clean-up crew wouldn’t be unexpected. Connie had often checked rosters and assignment details before drops and South had often asked about them, but Connie found herself hesitating to share, dancing on a knife edge as she was.

Would it give her away? No. Would it change South’s behaviour? Almost certainly.

“There’s a hidden name on the roster,” she settled on, instead. South would come to the correct name regardless, but it felt safer. “But we need to not focus on that. You’ll be with me and Carolina. I need you to watch my back, okay?”

South’s shoulders were pulled into a tight line, her hands braced against the sink, and she sighed. “Of course, mischief. I _always_ have your back.”

Connie crossed the distance between them and laid her face against South’s spine, her arms wrapped around her waist. South laid a hand over the top of hers and some of the tension in her shoulders released.

“I know you do,” Connie said, her heart fluttering lightly in her chest. A warm feeling that wilted quickly, poisoned by guilt. “You always do.”

It was a quick breakfast kind of morning. None of Alpha had the time to grab more than the usual pre-mission rations: specialised, high-energy smoothies designed specifically to handle their nutritional needs as quickly and efficiently as possible. They were chugging them in the locker room, the cups left discarded on the benches for the other agents to deal with later.

The Director waited for no one and nothing.

The agents of Alpha Squad piled around the holographic display as they did every mission. Connie found her usual spot, leaning against the edge with a perfect view of the rest of the table, ready to observe. It was so routine as to be boring, especially considering she had already read the mission briefing the evening before. There would be—

“—two teams, A and B as standard. Team A will be approaching the facility from the east side whilst Team B approaches from the south. Team B will act as a distraction to draw the Insurrectionist forces away from Team A’s entry point and primary objective. Each team—”

—would have an infiltration specialist to get them inside. Team A would be made up of Connie, South and Carolina, whilst Team B would be York, Washington and North. Wyoming had no team and was instead assigned to reconnaissance, a sniper on a roof to keep an eye on events within the facility.

(And, CT had no doubt, to keep a watchful eye on the agents.)

It was a mission like any other tech retrieval mission, just larger scale. They expected hearty resistance from the ‘Insurrectionists’ and the aim was to take as much technology as possible with as few casualties as possible—on their side, that is.

“As few as possible implies that a couple of casualties is acceptable, you do realise that, right?” CT said, hearing South hide a snort behind her and Carolina shifting uncomfortably to her side.

“Losses are a risk of war, Agent Connecticut, but that does not mean that we accept them as an inevitability. We are simply prepared for the eventuality,” the Director said.

CT rolled her eyes.

In the corner of her HUD, an alert from South popped up that just said:

SD//: <*gags*>

Connie struggled not to laugh.

Florida was in Team A’s Pelican. He welcomed them aboard with a friendly, beckoning hand and his unnaturally cheery disposition that made South swerve as far out from his personal bubble as possible in such a small space. It forced Connie to pass a little closer to him than she would have liked and the hair on the back of her neck raised.

He was so… unsettling.

Connie struggled to even remember if he’d been at the briefing. He certainly had no role to speak of. At least, not one that she had seen, and she knew about Texas’ role, so she felt confident in the assessment that he was there merely as another observational tool. If he and Wyoming worked together often, as York had once claimed, then it wasn’t a stretch.

 _I should probably verify that at some point,_ she thought idly, pulling down her harness. Another thing added to the pile. The biggest revelations were already torn open in her hands, but there were still little things she needed to know, details she was unsure of, that had simply never been a priority before. The days and weeks to come would be about them, just as much as it was about clarifying the bigger picture.

The Pelican ride was long and quiet. Carolina and Niner sat up in the cockpit, talking about their method of approach, whilst South and Connie sat in silence unknowingly enforced by Florida’s presence, casting glances at each other but sharing nothing more than a few casual comm. messages.

Florida didn’t follow them when they jumped out of the Pelican.

Armoured boots met the rocky surface of a road carved into the edge of a mountainside, overlooking the sprawling research facility backed up against it. Carolina was quick to match her armour to their surroundings, from bright teal to dull brown, and South cocked her head at her.

“Really?” she said, gesturing incredulously. “And what about the rest of us?”

“Just don’t get seen,” Carolina said with a shrug, as she hopped over the guardrail and skidded down the side.

South’s head rolled with her eyes and she turned on her voice modulator. “ _Just don’t get seen!_ ” she said in Carolina’s voice, pitched up a notch. She jumped up onto the guardrail, the metal creaking and bending under the weight. “She’s fucking _insufferable._ ”

“ _I can still hear you, you know,_ ” Carolina said over the radio.

“Oh, I know,” South said, a flash of that confident grin in her voice that Connie knew well, before jumping down after Carolina.

Connie shook her head at both of them and followed.

Dust and dirt kicked up into the air behind them. Their grav boots helped to keep them upright as they slid down the mountainside until they came to a stop at the base, mere metres away from an electrified fence twice the height of South.

“What’s the ETA on the fence, York?” Carolina said, fingers to the side of her helmet.

“ _Give me sixty seconds. We’ve just reached the control panel._ ”

“You have thirty.”

“ _Man, you’re a hard woman to please,_ ” York teased. Thirty-six seconds later, the power to the fence went down. “ _Okay, you’re clear, but I don’t know for how long, so move quickly._ ”

“Give me a leg up,” Connie said, beckoning South over. South cupped her hands and Connie stepped into them, pushing off and up. She used South’s shoulder as a second step and made the jump, grasping the top of the fence and hoisting herself over.

Carolina made the jump with a running start and a perfect, gymnast’s flip—and a little bit of a kick from her unit.

“Why can’t we just cut through this shit?” South said, grasping the wire. It shook noisily.

“Because whilst York cut the power to the electrification, but we have no idea if that’s deactivated any other security measures applied to the fence, and we need to get in quietly,” Connie said, stepping back.

“Ugh.”

South huffed and rolled her shoulders, crouching down and making a powerful, vertical leap to grab the top of the fence, fingers curling into the metal loops. It was loud and less than graceful, her legs dangling beneath her. Dragging them up and planting them against the fence, all of her weight supported by her grip, she managed to get just enough purchase to drag herself up and throw a leg over.

She’d barely thrown herself down onto the ground when a surge of electricity shot along the fence.

“…I’m gonna fucking kill that lockpick,” South grumbled, dragging herself to her feet.

“Not if he inadvertently kills you first,” Connie said, poking her in the side.

“You wanna bet, mischief? I’ll come back to haunt his ass. Kill him then.”

“We need to find cover and wait until we have the all clear,” Carolina said firmly. “As expected, there doesn’t appear to be any activity back here, so we should be fine, but…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Connie said. There would be no interference with their entrance, Needles had guaranteed that. “There’s some crates we can hide behind, not far from the door. Come on.”

They ducked behind the crates and waited for the signal from North, but the audible chaos of Team B’s ‘distraction’ reached them long before the light on their HUDs flashed green. Gunfire and explosions were as hard to miss as they were to resist taking as a cue.

“I hate stealth,” South said. “I ever told you that?”

“Yes, South,” Carolina said, through gritted teeth, “you have.”

Connie shifted in place. _Something_ had Carolina on edge today. It wasn’t exactly hard to guess what.

When the green light finally came, they moved up to the door and Connie hunkered down in front of the access terminal to do her thing. It wasn’t hard, especially not now; she knew Rat’s security standards like the back of her hand after months of experience with them. In fact, she knew them so well that she had to fake a mistake to keep herself from looking _too_ good, or making the mission progress too quickly.

“We don’t have time for this, CT,” Carolina said, hovering at her shoulder.

“I’m well aware of that,” CT said, already fixing her ‘mistake’ and moving on. The door was still open in under a minute. “There,” she said, “we’re in, and we still have plenty of time. I know what I’m doing, boss.”

Team B’s distraction had done its job. The hallway that extended out in front of them was empty, with a couple of scattered doors left open in the rush to respond. Team A moved ahead slowly, careful not to trip anything that could draw attention back their way prematurely as they followed the pre-mapped route based on the building’s blueprints.

The opened rooms were empty of not only people, but items of interest. They had entered through the living zone of the facility. They passed by entire hallways of storage and sleeping quarters before finally reaching a barrier, dividing it from the research zone.

“Voice activated lock,” Connie said, already working on a way around it. “Probably keyed to respond to the leaders or primary researchers. You can bypass it with a card, but we don’t have that, so this might take a—”

“ _Hey, dickbiscuit, open up,_ ” said Demo’s voice behind her, startling Connie half-way out of her skin. She turned to South, the access panel flashing ‘open’ behind her, and stared.

“ _Dickbiscuit?_ ” she asked.

South shrugged. “Felt like something he’d say, just going by our brief encounter where he called us assholes then shot at us. And, hey,” she gestured, “it worked.”

The door slid open with a pneumatic hiss.

Researchers, obviously, had not made the same mad dash towards the front of the facility that their security had. They were huddled inside locked laboratories, tucked out of sight and mostly out of mind. Connie led the team past any labs that held nothing of immediate value, marking them on her HUD for a secondary investigation by Beta Squad that she knew would never actually come.

The first area of real interest was yet another armoury filled with alien weaponry, attached to specially designed weapons racks that lined the walls. Connie marked the location on her map like everything before it and Carolina was quick to take a fresh set of modified plasma rifles from one of the racks near the door.

“I’ve never known so much Covenant weaponry outside of the front lines,” Carolina said, weighing the rifles in her hands before she attached them to her thighs. Casting her gaze over the collection of weapons, something on the far wall caught must have her eye, because she took off towards it.

“Innie bastards must have some real good fuckin’ contacts. Can’t fault the strategy though,” South said, pulling a concussion rifle from the wall. “No better way to fuck with the UNSC than to turn this shit against them.”

“Well,” Carolina said, coming back with a gravity hammer mag-locked to her back, “let’s go and give them a taste of their own.”

Connie bit her tongue so hard she tasted iron.

“The target is directly up ahead,” she said, stepping back and away from the weapons.

Carolina nodded and raised her fingers to her helmet. “North, sitrep?”

North’s voice crackled into life on the radio. “ _Area’s still hot, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. One of the ODST rip-offs was up here earlier, but they peeled off not long ago. Keep an eye out._ ”

“Copy that.” Carolina hung up. “Alright, let’s move.”

The target room was concealed behind thick blast doors, built to withstand something much stronger than any weaponry that Project Freelancer had access to. Connie had to bypass a holographic lock the second she attempted to get around the standard security measures, not by opening it the old-fashioned way, but by cutting off the lock at the source.

It was the first time she had experienced genuine difficulty in navigating Rat’s security standards in weeks. Connie almost smiled; Rat still had some surprises up their sleeve.

And apparently, so did their group.

The doors opened up to a stream of bullets, carving a line in the air above their heads. No, not one stream; two distinct columns of gunfire blasted out from within the room that forced them to act quickly, to duck into cover barely a couple of metres over the threshold.

Despite knowing she wouldn’t get hit, the shock left Connie breathless as she pressed her back against the row of terminals they hid behind.

“Turrets?” South said, sharing a sidelong look with Carolina.

“Could be,” Carolina said, fingers curling around the grips of her new rifles. “I see three hostile IFF signatures. If it’s turrets, I’ll do what I did at Bjorndal.”

“It’s not turrets,” Connie said, craning her neck backwards to feign that she was looking. “Not strictly speaking.”

“Cut the crypticism, CT.”

“It’s the pair York’s started referring to as the ‘emoji twins’.” Though they’d have shot him just for that. The Chain Twins, if you _had_ to refer to them as a unit. Ripper and Smiley, if you didn’t. “Chain guns. Portable. No set axis of movement.”

“Fucking _great_ ,” South groaned. “At least that means it probably isn’t—”

“Sup, dickbiscuits!” Demo boomed somewhere above them.

“—I just had to open my fuckin’ mouth, didn’t I?” South said, head hitting the surface behind her with a sharp thunk.

“You were right about the dickbiscuit thing, at least,” Connie said. South snorted.

“Don’t let them move,” Demo said, as chain gun fire continued to rain overhead. “You hear me? Keep them _pinned._ ”

Creepy, distorted laughter pierced the air and the ‘what the fuck’ was written all over South and Carolina’s body language.

Connie, who had been warned of the pair’s rather… particular aesthetics, in advance, shook her head and peered over the top of their cover. Dropping back down much more quickly than she had to, when the bullets so perfectly skirted around her, she said:

“This is an expansive testing chamber, with minimal cover. Set up around the centre are four arches filled with glowing light that I can only assume are the teleporters we’ve been sent here to find,” she said, all eyes on her. “The chain guns are positioned on slightly elevated platforms in the northeast and northwest corners. The demolitions guy is standing in the middle of the room. He could dart through a teleporter at any second.”

“Are there any other exits?” Carolina asked.

“I didn’t see, but the blueprints suggest so. North side and east side. Plus, you know, the teleporters. More soldiers could come from any of those passages at any moment.”

“Not to fucking rush you,” South said, shifting to her knees, “but those bullets could start punching through these shitty fucking terminals any second. Not to mention, dickhead has free movement. The _fuck_ are we doing?”

“We need to eliminate the chain guns,” Carolina said.

“Yeah, and _how?_ If the Director wasn’t fucking _skimping_ on the AI supply, I’d be able to drop a fucking shield over them and they could turn themselves into fucking mincemeat, but he gave the last one to fucking _Beta_ _Squad_ ,” South popped over cover and shot a blast of concussive energy blindly towards the rear of the room, “so here we fuckin’ are.”

The seconds of silence that followed were disrupted by the constant sound of gunfire.

“CT, will one of these terminals have the research data on the teleporters?” Carolina asked.

“Assumedly, yes, but—” Connie started, only for Carolina to cut her off.

“Then you wait here. I’ll use my unit to reach the gunner on the eastern side. South, you wait until I draw fire and then go for the other. Aim to manoeuvre so that shooting at you means shooting at their allies,” Carolina said. “Once we’ve cleared the area, then, and only then, you can pull data from the terminals in case we can’t get these things out of here, got it CT?”

Connie frowned. “But boss, surely I’d be more use—”

“I don’t care where you think you’d be more use, CT. I gave you an order,” Carolina snapped, already pushing up to her feet.

“Yes, boss,” CT said through her gritted teeth, preparing her unit.

Carolina threw herself over the terminals and CT followed within a second, her unit kicking in and throwing forward a projection that feigned injury—a stray bullet to the side, enough to make Ripper pause and tilt her head. Carolina had her window and CT had her chance, throwing herself at Demo.

“ _Fuck_ ,” South cursed on the radio, followed by a grunt.

CT couldn’t look back. Focused on Demo, she had to calculate every strike so that it looked real but didn’t connect. She wasn’t there to fight him, not really; she was there to make sure that the others _didn’t_.

Not that Demo seemed to get that memo.

His robotic arm packed quite a punch, especially aimed directly at her head.

CT almost stumbled into a teleporter. Grunting, she launched back at Demo and shoved him until they were no longer at risk of falling through the arches if they made a single wrong move. He swung a second punch at her head and she ducked under it, then slammed her foot into his gut.

She patched herself into the ‘Innie’ channel.

“God dammit, Demo, I’m not _actually_ fighting you,” she hissed. Grabbing her knife from her hip, she made a wide swipe that barely caught the edge of his armoured chestplate.

“Oh yeah? What do you call this?!” he spat back, throwing yet _another_ punch. Already, CT could see how he’d come to rely on the extra force his arm offered him to win a fight. That would, at least, be easy to work around if he kept _trying_ to _punch her._

“Stopping my teammates from fighting you so you don’t _die!_ ” She dodged around him and made a second ineffectual swipe aimed at his back, this time. “I don’t think Needles would be particularly happy with me if you died today!”

“Bitch, _I_ wouldn’t be happy!”

“No shit, you’d be dead! Look—” CT huffed, dodging another strike that was, thankfully, now deliberately off mark, “you need to clear out of here. Project Freelancer won’t leave until either we have the tech we’re here for, or they’ve blown this place to smithereens.”

“Thanks, but I think we can handle ourselves,” Demo said.

“I’m _serious_ , Demo. I’m taking a risk just talking to you like this. You _saw_ what happens when the Director wants to clean up,” her knife scraped against the metal of his arm, “once Texas gets here, I can’t guarantee you guys get out of here alive.”

“We barely did the last time. _Or_ the time before that!”

“ _Exactly_ , that’s a point in _my_ favour, not yours!” God, he was worse than York. “I’m not doing this lightly. I don’t want the Project to get this stuff any more than you do.”

In some ways, that was a lie. The technology here could further stabilise Louisiana’s dangerous teleportation unit, make it less likely to malfunction. Yet any new tech that fell into Command’s hands was another tool they could use to wreak havoc in spaces where they should never have meddled in the first place.

She dodged another wide swing and launched a kick at Demo’s head that was easy for him to dodge.

Rolling, manic cackling filled the air and CT instinctively ducked behind Demo, her knee jammed into his spine to knock him ahead, as bullets streamed across the open spaces behind her. Demo cursed, spinning around and striking out wildly. CT threw up her arm to block it, the blade of her knife scraping against the thick metal of his hand, this time.

“Tell those two to be _careful_ ,” she said, following the line of the bullet streams to South and Carolina, both pinned in separate corners of the room. The purple rim of South’s helmet peeped barely past the edge of the metal crates she was hiding behind, whilst Carolina was constantly on the move, trying to find an opening to get at Smiley, who tracked her with terrifying precision.

“Why the fuck should I? They’re the enemy, just because you’re Keaton’s sister that doesn’t mean—”

He lunged forward at the exact moment that CT feigned a swipe with her blade, serrated edge outwards. Blood sprayed and spattered her armour as it tore through the material covering his abdomen, not as thick as the armour that protected his chest.

CT sucked in a breath. Demo stumbled back, arm flying to his gut.

“Shit, Demo, I—”

“She fucking stabbed me!” Demo yelled, and the laughter stopped. Blood seeped between his fingers and he almost fell, mustering just enough energy to throw a weak kick that caught CT off guard and made her jump away, her knife clattering to the floor. “The bitch fucking _stabbed_ me!”

Connie threw herself to the ground as the streams of bullets suddenly turned her way.

South didn’t waste the opportunity. She leaped over the crates and slammed her feet against Ripper’s hands, knocked her grip loose and her gun to the ground.

Carolina dashed at Smiley at the same moment, the force behind her speed unit enough to knock him into the wall. Bullets splintered the ceiling until his finger fell from the trigger and Carolina kicked the gun away, following it up with two more kicks in quick succession to his gut and head.

Connie’s head ricocheted back and forth—a strange _hiss_ followed by a startled yell from South pulling her gaze back towards her just in time to see Ripper throw a can of spray paint at South’s now bright yellow visor and _run._

Ripper jumped across terminals and the tops of the teleporters with surprising agility and threw herself down onto Carolina’s back, legs wrapped around her hips, arms around her helmet—

Until Smiley _swept_ Carolina’s feet from under her and she landed flat on her face with a startled yelp.

The Chain Twins made a break for it. As South clawed at her painted visor and Carolina rolled herself onto her back, they ran through two of the teleporters. The glowing energy disappeared behind them.

Demo was left behind on the ground, clutching his bleeding gut.

Connie didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t help him, no, that would raise thousands of questions she could never hope to answer in any way that maintained her innocence, but he was _bleeding._ He was bleeding out because of her and she could do _nothing_ but sit there and _stare_ , wide-eyed and panicked, as she realised that she could have _killed him_.

She could have killed one of her contacts’ teammates.

(Her _brother’s_ teammates.)

Stupidly, all she could do was say, “—I’m a sibling, not a sister,” and accept the bemused stare that followed.

South cursed and her helmet skidded across the floor, stopping at Connie’s side.

“What the _fuck_ was that?!” she snapped, kicking something.

Carolina pulled herself to her feet and started to approach Demo. “I don’t know,” she said, as Demo scrambled away. “How about we ask him?”

“Fuck _off,_ lady!” Demo said, pushing himself backwards with his feet. Carolina would have been on him in seconds, if he hadn’t collided with something first. Something invisible. “What the—”

That something grabbed him by the front of his armour and dragged him into the air, only the faint shimmer and strange distortion of the material within its grasp giving the figure itself away.

Then the shimmer melted into a pillar of pitch black.

Demo strained to touch the ground with his feet, but the tips of hits boots barely scraped the concrete.

“Which of the teleporters leads back to your centre of operations?” Texas said, lifting him higher off the ground. “All of them? One of them?”

Demo said nothing, kicking out at her legs. Two kicks struck her, but she only tilted her head.

“I’ve got time, you know. What I _don’t_ have much of, is _patience_ ,” she said through gritted teeth, grabbing him by the throat. Purple flashed above her shoulder, blink and you’d miss it. Jamming her fingers under his helmet, she pushed it off. “And that patience is already running thin. So you better start talking.”

“ _Fuck. You,_ ” Demo said.

And then he spat at her.

Something in Texas _snapped_ and her fist reared back, muscles beneath the armour rippling—

Only for a sudden spray of bullets to burst through the teleporter and catch her in the leg, dropping her to her knees. Her leg sparked, bright and unmistakable.

Demo fell to the ground and dragged himself to his feet with a pained grunt. He made a mad dash for the teleporter.

 _They’ll follow_ , Connie realised, in the same second that she drew another knife and threw it. They’d follow, and they’d find them, and it would all be over.

The knife pierced the power supply a split second after Demo went through and the teleporter died.

 _Shit._ That couldn’t have looked good.

“What the _hell_ was that CT?!” Carolina barked, marching over and pulling her up to her feet by her arm.

Connie hissed; a surprise shot of stinging pain rocketed up her side. She wrenched her arm away from Carolina and looked down—there was a slash in the kevlar, the skin beneath it bleeding.

She must have caught herself when she drew her weapon.

“I was aiming for him, but I got grazed by the damn bullets and it knocked me off mark,” Connie lied, taking a step back. All of the teleporters were now offline and unpowered. “I’m sorry, boss.”

“You weren’t supposed to be in the fight in the _first_ place, Connecticut. I _told_ you to _wait_ , and what did you do? You charged in and— where do you think you’re going?”

Connie blinked, about to defend her single step away from her when she realised Carolina’s attention was now on Texas, who was stalking towards the door.

Texas spun on her heel and cocked her head. “I’m going to do my damn job.”

“Oh no, you’re going to—”

“I’m not going to do _anything_ , Carolina,” Texas said, gesturing widely at the room. “Look at this. And you all wonder why the Director keeps sending me in. Stop making a _mess_ and maybe I wouldn’t have to clean up after you.”

She waited for a retort. Carolina bristled, shoulders a straight line of tension, but she said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Texas said. Turning on her heel, she waved dismissively. “Now hurry up and get the damn tech out of here before the call is made.”

Black melted back into transparent shimmering and she was gone.

Silence.

“Get to work,” Carolina said, storming off into the corner. She’d be checking in with Team B and calling extraction.

Connie did as she was told, this time. She gathered all the relevant documentation from the terminals that surrounded the teleporters. Making sure to wipe all existing coordinates from the local system, she carefully disconnected each teleportation arch from the network and pinpointed the piece of hardware responsible for the teleportation field.

No larger than a softball, it was supposedly capable of powering gates of varying sizes and varying ranges, adjustable to the user’s needs. High quality Covenant technology adapted for more widespread usage.

It was the kind of technology that could be invaluable when fighting the war.

Not that the Director would use it for such things. Sometimes she wondered if he even remembered there was a war on, outside of his petty game of cat and mouse with Needles’ boss.

There was no guarantee that she wouldn’t damage it, in ripping it out of its surrounding hardware, but the more mechanically minded of them were either up at the front of the facility fighting fake Insurrectionists or back on the _Invention_ , not deemed necessary on this assignment.

CT rolled her eyes and pried it loose. The Director could deal with the consequences of his choices later.

“I have what we need,” she said, waving the device and her data drive.

Niner picked them up from the area out back where they’d entered. Team B’s distraction had done a wonderful job and there were no doubt corpses littering the floor—UNSC corpses, clad in regulation green that should have made eyebrows raise much higher than it did.

The Pelican bay was open when they arrived. Carolina hopped inside and went to the cockpit without a word, leaving South to help pull Connie up into the bay.

They almost jumped out of their skin when Florida popped up beside them, cheerful as ever.

“Welcome back agents! Did you find what you were looking for?” he said, so upbeat as to be disturbing.

Connie’s grip on the hardware tightened. Swallowing to wet her dry throat and shrinking under Florida’s gaze, she reluctantly waved it in the air and then gave it to him, when he offered a hand.

“Very well done, Agent Connecticut!”

“…thanks,” she said, moving away as soon as she felt safe to do so.

“He’s so fucking creepy,” South said. Connie sat down and South knelt in front of her, setting the medkit she’d plucked off the wall down on the next seat over. “What the fuck _is_ his deal?”

“Who knows. Who knows what anyone’s deal is around here,” Connie said, idly playing with a strand of South’s hair. Her painted helmet was on the floor beside her, smeared with bright yellow that Connie had a feeling wouldn’t come off easily. “What’s the medkit for?”

“Your damn bullet gaze, what d’you think?” South said, raising a brow at her.

Connie rolled her eyes and tapped her on the nose. “It’s not a big deal. You don’t have to.”

“No, but I fuckin’ want to.” South popped open the medkit and pulled out the necessary cleaning tools. She poked Connie’s arm until she raised it to grasp the harness above her head, letting South start to wipe the wound clean of drying blood.

South’s brow furrowed. The cut was very much a cut, not a track left by a grazing bullet.

She looked up at Connie, stared into her eyes for one torturous second— then kept cleaning, carefully as ever, until the wound was clear of old blood. A quick application of taped-on gauze later and she was done, even giving the injury a quick kiss for good measure.

Connie’s heart beat a little faster in her chest.

“Be careful, mischief,” South said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She took the seat on her other side and then her hand. “Don’t go getting clumsy on me.”

Connie squeezed her hand tight and smiled past the ball of guilt swelling in her throat. “I won’t.”

The ride back was somehow quieter than the ride there. It was the lack of chatter from the cockpit that did it, turning the already unnatural silence of the bay into something much heavier and darker.

Texas’s role in their missions only seemed to grow with every major drop. By now, it was an open secret; Texas was a constant looming threat, to be deployed at the slightest sign of a mistake in the field.

The Director didn’t trust them, and Texas didn’t seem to, either.

They were less than five minutes out when the research facility blew up behind them, an explosion that shook the bird and them inside it even at a distance, even in the air.

Connie hid her flinch by holding her side, feigning pain, and South looked the other way.

Connie held no illusion that South knew anything except for the fact that she’d lied to Carolina. No, to South the lie was a lie told by an agent who was tired of having to defend themself to an angry CO, whose stick up her ass was more about the black-armoured intruder than it was about her team’s minor mistakes.

South would always have her back in moments like those. That had never been a question.

Unfortunately, moments like those were where it mattered the least, these days.

Connie sighed. She spent most of the flight with her eyes closed in a half-hearted mockery of sleep, seeking to avoid the ever-present weight of Florida’s scrutiny. Once again, she made a mental note to verify his position at the Project, but she no longer had any doubt that he was another of the Director’s favoured few, trusted to keep tabs on the group when he couldn’t be there himself. One half of a pair of watching eyes, honed in on Alpha Squad.

That lack of doubt was only justified further after the debriefing.

There was no dressing-down that day. They had succeeded in their primary objective and whilst the escape of the so-called Insurrectionist frontrunners was ‘unfortunate’, the Director was confident that they would tackle that particular issue on another assignment.

Connie didn’t pay much attention. It was nothing she hadn’t heard before. Instead, she watched the room, traced the threads of tension that hung between the agents and Command. Carolina’s spine was rigid, her shoulders pulled taut. York, hovering a little too close, never looked so far away as to lose sight of her. South wasn’t even standing straight, arms folded, and her hip popped, whilst her brother was watching her, his head angled subtly to the side. Washington, stood perfectly at attention, kept looking at Connie.

Wyoming wasn’t there. Texas wasn’t there.

But Florida was. He was there watching them all, following the same threads that Connie did.

The debriefing ended. The agents filtered out.

All of them except Florida.

The bridge doors closed behind them and he stepped out of the shadows, into the light of the holographic display.

Connie frowned. She’d have to keep an eye on him, too.


	19. Turned to Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/8090b76ca9e8820461f08139c764d1bd/3bcfb86700848079-4e/s640x960/39b0e1e6e294ac2543efa0914ad7de76ebcbf920.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

“I am so, _so_ sorry. I swear, I was doing _everything_ I could and I _still_ managed to stab him.”

“ _You didn’t even stab him; it was a slash. You should know that, mx. knife fucker._ ”

CT blinked. “That… just sounds painful.”

“ _I think that’s generally the point,_ ” Rat said, shrugging. Their mask was pushed up so they could eat a sandwich that looked like it would probably fall apart if they let go of it for so much as a second.

Long-suffering Needles sighed. “ _It’s fine, Connie. You didn’t mean to and he was up on his feet the next day. It wasn’t serious._ ”

“ _Besides_ ,” Rat said, swallowing and gesturing at her with their sandwich; a piece of pickle fell out and Rat 2 scampered to steal it, “ _he got stabbed by somebody actively trying_ not _to stab him! It’s the exact_ opposite _of your fault!_ ”

“Now who’s saying stabbed when it was a slash?”

“ _I don’t follow any rules. Not even my own. Oh, and_ ,” they took another big bite and chewed, swallowing as they talked, “ _even better, he’s been running around asking why none of us told him you weren’t Keaton’s sister anymore. One theory was you stabbed him for misgendering you. We told him that’d be a reasonable response._ ”

CT bit back a laugh, whilst Rat let loose their own raucous laughter that filled the space with ease.

“Hopefully that means the rest of your team is extending me the same forgiveness?” CT said, somewhere between smiling hopefully and cringing.

Rat leaned back in their chair. Rat 2 squeaked. Needles coughed.

“ _They’re… not your biggest fans. You’re working for the enemy, an enemy that has killed hundreds of our soldiers and injured multiple members of our team severely,_ ” he said. For once, he had the decency to look sheepish about it. “ _But they are mostly ragging on Demo right now._ ”

“I guess I’ll have to take what I can get,” CT said. She didn’t know why she cared, or if she really did; those people knew her brother, but they didn’t know her, and she didn’t know them. Not to mention the damage they’d caused her team in return. No, they didn’t matter. Not really.

What did matter was not restarting the same argument about the same thing over and over again.

“ _Besides,_ ” Rat said, around another mouthful of sandwich, “ _the real problem is that Texas chick._ ”

“ _What’s her agenda, Connie? She shows up—_ ” he waved a hand, _“—eight, maybe nine times out of ten. Either she tears through the place herself, or she plants a damn bomb or transmitter, and we lose a whole facility._ ”

It was a slight exaggeration, but considering Texas had been sent to raze another small base in the short time since the last mission took place, CT could hardly fault him.

“Eight is pushing it, it’s definitely not nine.” CT sighed, rubbing her face. “I— the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t think Texas has any idea what’s actually happening here, but I have little to no proof of that and I have an equal amount of evidence that she knows _everything._ Her AI is involved in the fragmentation process. She does all these top-secret missions. Yet— I don’t know.”

“ _What is it Connie?_ ”

“It’s the maintenance sessions. They monitor her _memories_. They keep her isolated from the rest of the team for a reason. Hell, she’s the only member of Alpha who undergoes stasis during jumps, _just_ so they can monitor her,” CT said. “That doesn’t make me think she’s a willing participant in what’s going on. She doesn’t even know she’s an AI, for christ’s sake.”

“ _But she’s loyal to the Director?_ ”

“As loyal as anyone else here who follows his orders without question. Maybe a bit more. It’s complicated.”

“ _You were scared shitless of her like, last month, Connie,_ ” Rat added, helpfully. CT glared at them as Needles’ eyebrow raised, looking from Rat to CT with a clear question on his face. “ _Oh calm your tits, both of you. I’m allowed to be worried too, y’know._ ”

“Yes, I was… worried, about some of her behaviour, but it makes sense to me now. She had to make sure I wasn’t a threat to her own secrets. Secrets that the Director is forcing her to keep,” CT said. She did her best to ignore the hard stare of Needles, deciding to give him no more of an answer than that. “That behaviour stopped. As of right now, I don’t think she’s an active risk but yes, Needles, I _will_ keep an eye on her.”

Needles shut his mouth.

“Thank you.”

She adjusted her position, folding her legs up tightly beneath her. Finally, she was able to pull up the information she had been intending to look at.

“If you wanted to get on my ass about anyone, it’d be Florida and Wyoming,” she said, and immediately gave Needles a look. “Which is _not_ an invitation, by the way.”

“ _She knows you so well,_ ” Rat snickered, elbowing him. Needles folded his arms.

“We already knew about Wyoming, obviously,” CT said, already in the system and singling out mission reports filed by Wyoming and Florida. The overlap was instantly clear. “But it seems that Florida is also connected to Command. He was in the Pelican when we dropped into the research facility, but he never left it. He was just… watching.”

“ _Isn’t he lower on that board thingy?_ ”

“Yes, but that’s almost the perfect way to avoid suspicion. We have a running joke that he just… appears out of nowhere, then vanishes just as quickly. He’s an unknown element around here, not quite on the level of Texas, but…” CT shrugged. “He’s someone to watch out for.”

“ _That list of people is growing, Connie,_ ” Needles said, brow knitted. “ _Perhaps we should start to think about pulling you out of there._ ”

CT blinked and stammered, “Wh— What? No, no way,” folding her legs even tighter beneath herself. “Needles, I can’t leave.”

“ _You have everything we need to take this guy down. The longer you stay there, the more risk you’re putting yourself in. And—_ ” Needles sighed, looking away to the side to avoid her gaze. _“The longer I_ let _you stay there, the more risk_ I’m _putting you in._ ”

“Oh for _fuck’s_ sake, Needles,” CT snapped, her fists clenched. Who did he think he _was?_ Why was he so sure that _he_ knew what was best for her? She knew what she was doing. She knew the risks she was taking. Why did he— why—

She knew the answer, of course.

(“ _—just because you’re Keaton’s sister—_ ”)

CT took a deep breath and grabbed her beads before she could start to pick at her scar.

“No. I do not have everything I need,” she said, focusing on the cool texture of the beads. “There’s more information being added to the servers every day. If I leave, I don’t get access to that anymore and we miss vital intel that could strengthen the case against him.”

Needles scoffed. “ _We already have concrete proof that he broke the Cole Protocol. Are you saying that isn’t enough?”_

“I’m saying I know the UNSC and their procedures. I was about to be thrown into prison for exposing another corrupt UNSC-affiliated organisation only a couple of years ago,” CT said. The beads were smooth and familiar, she knew every tiny nick in the otherwise pristine surface. “If we don’t have an airtight case with as much information as we can have on hand… I can’t guarantee that it would be enough, no.”

Needles opened his mouth, then shut it. He tapped his fingers against the desk they were sat at and had the courtesy to actually think his words through before he spoke again.

“ _What else do you think you can find?_ ”

The beads switched hands. “They’ve begun to document their plans for future AI. They’re planning to split off Empathy next month. After that, it’ll probably be another three months before they split off Trust, going by their current schedule.”

Rat scrunched their face. “ _Trust and Empathy? Wow, that’s fucked up._ ”

“This is all pretty fucked up, Rat.”

“ _Is that really worth staying for, Connie?_ ” Needles said, meeting her eye until CT broke the contact.

The more he said it the more the name felt like a brand, stamped on her forehead. Connie, the child. Connie, the little sibling. Connie, the person he had to protect as if she couldn’t protect herself.

CT squeezed the beads.

“ _Yes_ , it is,” she said, barely contained venom on the tip of her tongue. “And even if it wasn’t? _I_ decide when it’s time to leave. And I’m not ready to leave yet. So _drop_ it, Needles.”

Needles opened his mouth again and Rat jammed their elbow into his ribs, just hard enough to make him reconsider.

“ _Fine,_ ” he said, “ _it’s your call,_ ” he said, and if CT felt like she’d heard it before, tens of times, then she knew it was more like hundreds. He said it was fine, but there was _always_ something else. One dropped argument was the seed for the next and CT was getting tired of ripping them from the ground before the roots could take hold.

Worse, the roots beneath this fight went much deeper than the rest. His concern wasn’t unfounded, but if she admitted that aloud then she’d never have heard the end of it. She already knew it would come up again, re-phrased and re-packaged—if that.

She couldn’t leave. There was more work to do, there was more data to collect, there was—

South. Wash. Maine.

Connie didn’t _want_ to leave. Not now. Not _ever_.

Not if she could help it.

Sessions in the Intelligence Centre had become nothing more than strangely liminal time, straddling the line between the past and the present. In a way, it had to be; to focus on that time too keenly would only have reminded her of what was missing from that room every time she stepped through the door and saw the empty workstation, gathering dust beside her own.

Connie came to the Intelligence Centre to work and then she left. It wasn’t that she didn’t retain information from the hours she spent there, but rather that the sessions were nothing but a means to an end. She did her work, she left the centre. It wasn’t a place she hoped to linger, mentally or physically.

York still occasionally swung by, drawing that time back into focus, but those visits had become rarer as time went on. He was busier, too. He had extra sessions to run to monitor his integration with Delta, on top of everything else.

So, the visits were rare but appreciated, for the most part.

(He’d tried to sit in Mass’ chair, once. Connie wasn’t entirely proud of her reaction.)

Her latest session was no different. Command had assigned her to work on tracing yet another of the ‘Insurrectionists’ major bases of operation, one that had thus far remained elusive except for coded mentions in encrypted communications. Even Connie didn’t know where it was—Needles had kept her relatively in the dark about such things, as his employer was apparently not satisfied that she would not betray them somewhere down the line.

It was as monotonous as every other day until something like a shadow moved in the corner of Connie’s eye and her heart instinctively skipped a beat.

Beyond the glass that separated the centre from the bridge, Agent Texas stepped out of the heavy doors that lead to the Director’s office and laboratory. Her stance was so unnatural as to be robotic, until she completely crossed the threshold. Then, just like that, her shoulders fell from their unnatural line into a sketch of her attitude and she pulled off her helmet.

Her face shouldn’t have been a surprise. Connie had seen it in her files, she had seen the inspiration for it in the videos; in person, however, it was different. She had never seen the face above the armour. The uncannily perfect complexion and neatly tied-up ponytail, not a single strand out of place, contrasted against the hard lines of Texas’ armour, scuffed and battle-worn.

Texas blew her bangs from her face and they fell back into place as if she’d never affected them at all.

Without her helmet on, the words that came out of her mouth were less muffled and supported by the movement of her lips.

“Ugh, if I have to do one more of those boring debriefings…” Tex said—or, that’s what Connie thought she said, at least. The dark purple figure of Omega appeared above her shoulder and she snapped at him, words lost in the turn of her head. His hologram dissolved and Texas rolled her eyes, forcibly unclenching her fist. “I’m pulling you.”

She reached behind her neck and closed her fingers around the chip settled in her implant, giving it a forcible yank. She flinched but was otherwise fine as she put the chip away in her ammo compartment.

There was certainly no love between the two.

Texas undid her hair-tie and shook out her ponytail, pinching the tie between her teeth as she gathered her hair back up. It was such a human action, something no one—let alone the Director—would have ever thought to program her to do. Had she picked it up somewhere, watching the other agents? Or, as the Director theorised, were these AI more human than they should have been from the start?

Whatever the answer was, Connie was struck with an inexplicable urge to talk to her.

She was half-way out of her seat before the thought consciously crossed her mind, only for a pair of familiar arms to snake around her shoulders and trap her in place.

“Hey mischief,” South said, nose buried in Connie’s hair.

Connie slumped back into her chair and tilted her head back. “What are you doing here?” she asked. In the corner of her eye, Tex pulled her helmet back on and walked out of view. “You’re not supposed to—”

“—come inside the nerd centre, yeah, I know,” South said, brushing Connie’s hair back behind her ear. “But I got tired of breaking the rules by proxy. So here I am, breaking the rules myself.”

Her timing could have been better, but Connie couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed. At least, not for more than a second.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” she said, leaning up and giving South an upside-down kiss. “Does that mean you brought snacks?”

South waved two almond and dark chocolate bars in front of Connie’s face. “Duh, what kinda girlfriend would I be if I didn’t?”

South flopped into the seat on her other side, away from Mass’ station. Tossing Connie the bars, she lounged back and kicked her feet up.

Connie started unwrapping the bar and looked past her. The view from the windows was empty; Texas had left. 

_Goddammit,_ she thought, before mentally slapping the thought aside. Why did she care? What purpose would talking to her even have? What problems would it ever solve?

She could practically hear Needles going: _So much for being careful, huh Connie?_

She tore the wrapping open with her teeth. South whistled.

Connie laughed faintly, nudging her in the shin with her foot. “Thank you. It’s nice to have a little company.”

“I’m snatching what time I can fuckin’ get with you, with how our fucking schedules are right now,” South said, rolling her chair up as close to Connie as possible. “We haven’t even got class this week. Is something big coming up? Is that why they’re running us fucking ragged?”

“Not that I know of,” Connie said, “but you never know around here, really, do you?”

“Eh. True. Like, me being in here could either result in cock-all, or get me kicked down to Beta squad, totally depends on the Director’s mood,” South said, crossing her arms behind her head.

“Well if it’s any comfort, the board hasn’t even moved in months.”

“Wonder why that is.”

“I think we know why, South,” Connie said.

South shrugged, glancing up at the board above their heads. After a second, she tore her eyes away and poked Connie in the stomach with her foot.

“You ready for me to kick your ass in our unarmoured sparring next?” she said, poking her again. “I’m going to bring my wins back to the double digits.”

“In your _dreams_ ,” Connie said, grabbing her foot and holding it still. They’d reset their point counter, once it had gotten too high to realistically keep track of.

“Actually, babe, in my dreams I lose.” South flashed her a mischievous grin and waggled her eyebrows. Connie laughed, pushing her leg off her lap and South a foot back, the wheels on her seat carrying her away until she planted her foot on the floor.

“Then I guess I’ll be making your dreams come true,” Connie teased, stuffing the last of the bar into her mouth. South only grinned wider. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

“Eh, it’s what you love about me,” South teased in return, rolling back over and leaning into Connie’s space. She grasped the arms of her seat either side of her and hovered so close Connie could feel her breath.

“I can’t confirm or deny that,” Connie said, voice low. Her eyes flicked to South’s lips, but when South leaned in to kiss her, she only allowed a peck before she pulled away laughing. “No making out in the nerd centre!”

“Ha! You called it the nerd centre!” South laughed, spinning in her chair. “Is us making out going to compromise all your top-secret nerd information?”

“Yes,” Connie said, with mock seriousness. “It’ll infect all the files.”

“With what? Cooties?”

“Exactly.”

They both burst out laughing, filling the usually deathly silent room with more energy than it had held in months.

South stayed with her until the session ended and their bands began to beep, ushering them ahead to the unarmoured training rooms. Her presence kept Connie’s mind off the missed opportunity that shouldn’t have _felt_ like a missed opportunity—she knew better than that. Talking to Texas was the kind of risk that would get people killed. If the Director really was meddling in her memories like his files implied, then to talk to her would be _suicide_ , regardless of wherever her loyalties lay.

So, Connie put it out of mind. South was a vibrant distraction, their sparring not only exciting enough to occupy her thoughts but also another opportunity to take advantage of what time they had, because South was right. Their schedules were as full as ever and that time was valuable. More valuable than South could ever know.

The first hologram unfolded from her armour, darting forward as she dropped to her knees and drew her blade.

The second stayed down, rolling across the floor as she leapt up and jumped over the training bot, crushing its head underfoot. She landed in front of a second, her blade buried in its chest and her third hologram dashed to the side, distracting another bot long enough for her to sweep the feet from under the one behind her.

The final bot fell to a slash of her serrated blade across its segmented spine that left it sparking on the ground.

CT fell to her knees, panting.

“F.I.L.S.S., reset,” she said, fist braced against the floor. The panels beneath the bots recessed, taking the robotic carcasses with them.

Her head was spinning, but not so severely that she had to stop. A break would be enough, and she took one, shifting to sit on the floor and gulping down a swig of water from the flask attached to her hip.

(Much to her relief, she actually drank it, rather than just imagining it.)

CT looked at the clock. A little before 0230 hours. She could probably manage another thirty minutes before she was forced to take herself back to bed and get what sleep she could.

She’d push herself to four in about twenty.

“Alright, F.I.L.S.S.,” her flask snapped back onto her hip and she stood up, rolling her neck, “send in another three.”

Three different floor panels retracted and then returned with fresh training bots, armed with training guns. Not the paint kind, rather the kind that stung like a bitch but caught on the armour’s electrified shielding and then fell to the floor.

CT inhaled, exhaled—and then she attacked.

Hologram one, a facsimile of her launching herself at a bot’s head. Hologram two, peeling off to the left as she turned right. Hologram three, a mockery of her stalling mid-stride and taking a bullet to the head as she ducked down and darted ahead. She disarmed the bot seconds later, twisting its arm from its socket.

One bullet to the head and the final bot went down, leaving her once again standing amongst a small collection of wrecked training bots.

She stumbled, crushing one of their hands underfoot, but stayed upright.

“Reset, F.I.L.S.S.”

She lifted her foot away as the floor withdrew beneath it, adjusting her stance so she didn’t fall into the holes that surrounded her and left her standing on an island formed by the modular floor.

She was about to pull off her helmet for another drink when the hairs on the back of her neck raised into hackles.

Her sensor suite backed the feeling up with a motion alert, somewhere up and to her rear. Her initial instinct to check the viewing bay connected to the bridge turned up nothing; there were no shadows or strange shimmers in the bay this time, no sign of Texas.

Which left only…

The public viewing bay wasn’t closed at night, CT knew that. She’d never have had the idea to practice if she hadn’t been able to sit there and watch Carolina train, long after the night cycle had begun. There was always a risk that someone would come by and see her running drill after drill with her unit, but from the bay there was no way to tell that she wasn’t on the powerline.

She’d had no reason to be paranoid about _that_ bay and yet there was a shadow standing there, cast in darkness.

Why hadn’t they turned on the lights?

That was the weird thing. No lights, just a shadow. Too short to be Texas, too average to determine anything else.

Night vision was no help to her, standing on a brightly lit training floor. Her sensor suite’s settings were adjustable, but any adjustments she made were rendered useless for the same reason. The best she was able to do was make the shadow a little starker, better defined, and all _that_ did was let her see the figure raise a hand in a friendly wave.

The hair on the back of her neck stood as sharp as needles.

Something wasn’t right.

CT ran through another round of holograms, not willing to let the intruder know she was shaken. She stopped at three where she would have pushed to four, a rare night ended without the smell of iron beneath her nose or bile rising in her throat.

She didn’t look at the window as she left. She climbed the stairs that lead to the viewing bay and ignored its entrance, making her way directly to the locker room instead.

She’d have to collect the drive later. It wasn’t visible, it could wait.

The locker room was dark and quiet. She was hyper-aware of every sound as she removed her armour, much quicker than she usually did. Too quickly; one of the clasps got caught and she huffed at herself, fighting to get it loose.

Whistling filled the air and a shot of adrenaline rushed down her spine.

“Why hello there, CT!” Florida said, upbeat as ever. It rode a line between believable and artificial. The smile on his face reached his eyes, only not in quite the right way. “It’s awfully late to be all kitted up in full armour, wouldn’t you say?”

CT forced the caught gauntlet open and set it down.

“Hi, Florida,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder. “I wanted to get some more training in, and this is one of the only times I can guarantee there’s no one on the floor. You know what the daily schedule is like, there’s rarely a free slot to take.”

Every word was carefully considered and put forth with the kind of composure Connie would have struggled to maintain. CT steeled herself, ignored the uncomfortable pressure of Florida’s eyes on the back of her head and continued to remove her armour as if he wasn’t there.

“I suppose that is true. You know, that’s very resourceful of you, Agent Connecticut. It’s nice to know that we have such dedicated agents here at Project Freelancer,” Florida said, appearing beside her, arms behind his back. “Why, I admire your gumption.” 

“Thank you,” CT said, forcing a smile. “Sorry, but I’m… _really_ tired, using my unit takes a lot out of me, even on the power. Could you—?”

“Oh, of course! Have a good night, CT. See you around,” Florida said, bowing slightly as he stepped away.

The whistling started up again the second he was out of her sight.

CT only left when she was sure he was gone.

Two nights later, she returned to the floor and continued her training.

To have never returned would have been more suspicious than to do so. Florida was on the lookout for unusual behaviour, potentially _concerning_ behaviour, and what she was doing was not that. _Not_ if she didn’t act as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been.

She could play their game.

Hypervigilance was a necessary curse, in the life she’d boxed herself into. She could imagine what some of the other agents thought of her, constantly looking towards the viewing bay whenever anyone new stepped in.

It was no surprise to her that her defiance had come across to some as bitterness, or as frustration born from her own perceived failings and ‘low’ position on the board. Her unfiltered rant towards Washington all those months ago certainly hadn’t helped that perception. Outward facing doubts born of distrust in a flawed system were easily twisted into self-doubt and that followed her, in little ways.

She’d been sat at ninth on the board ever since it stopped moving and so she must have appeared as if she was stagnating, as if her training was a fruitless effort to climb. Not everyone knew that the board had outlived its function, that the token movements in the lower ranks were just that: tokens, trying to maintain the illusion that the system was active.

So, some of them likely thought she was self-conscious, whilst others had her down as paranoid. Those others wouldn’t be wrong, though they’d have reached that conclusion for the wrong reasons.

Looking over her shoulder all the time made her daily floor session feel that much longer; it was no less annoying for her than it was a curiosity for everyone else. When she turned once to find the friendly face of Maine it was a relief; for the first time, she felt that she could pause to wave at them before continuing on.

They were still there when she finished and that was a relief, too.

“Hey there, big guy,” she said, stepping into the bay with her helmet tucked under her arm.

Maine greeted her with a soft grunt, turning to lean backwards against the windows. They had yet to be cleared for armour usage and though their muscle mass had returned with physical therapy, they still looked uncomfortable in their own skin.

“So,” Connie said, hopping up onto the ledge beside them, “scale of one to ten, how bored are you today?”

Maine rumbled, thick brow furrowing. After a second’s consideration, they raised a single finger— and then folded it so the tip touched their thumb before extending it again.

“Eleven, huh? That bad?”

The rumble became a grumble. ‘Restless,’ they signed, two fingers bent over the matching fingers on their other hand and shaking. ‘Month left, before re-evaluation.’

“That’s not long,” Connie said. She nudged them in the ribs. “A lot less time than you’ve already waited, that’s for sure.”

Maine huffed and folded their arms across their chest. Sigma ignited above their shoulder, so close that if his flames had been real it would have burned Maine, and smiled at Connie.

“ _Agent Maine is ‘itching’ to get back into the fight, in their own words. Though I do not detect any physical nuisance that would explain such a description,_ ” Sigma said.

Connie giggled. “It’s metaphorical, Sigma. It’s like… actually, I’m the worst person to explain this. I’m terrible with metaphors. When I itch for something, it’s usually a lot more literal than most people’s itching.”

Maine chuckled. Sigma tilted his head, a gesture that could have conveyed an almost childlike curiosity had his body not been consumed by fire and his eyes not been so piercing.

“It’s a human thing,” Connie said. “I’m sorry, Sigma, it’s hard to explain when someone doesn’t have a frame of reference.”

She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth, but Sigma smiled.

“ _I see,_ ” he said. “ _Thank you for trying, Agent Connecticut._ ”

Connie smiled back. “You can just call me CT like everyone else you know, Sigma. I’m sure I’ve told you that.”

“ _Of course, CT._ _I will try to remember that._ ”

“Anyway, Maine,” Connie jabbed them in the ribs with her elbow sharper this time, “if you’re that restless, why don’t we go book into an unarmoured training room? I can fudge the records, so they don’t know you’ve broken doctor’s orders…” she said, trailing off with a vague hand gesture.

Maine’s fingers drummed against their arm.

“Come on, it’ll be fun! You get to burn off some energy, remember how to fight again…”

‘Know how to fight,’ Maine signed, bopping her in the side of the head with a gentle fist. ‘No. Shouldn’t. Wash would worry.’

“ _Wash_ ,” Connie said, poking them in the chest, “is on a mission, and wouldn’t have to know. I certainly wouldn’t tell him. Would you?”

Maine grunted.

“We can keep it lowkey. It’s only me, I don’t think I have enough strength in my entire body to mess you up,” Connie said. “Come onnn, Maine! You know you want to.”

‘…bad influence,’ Maine signed. Connie beamed.

“Of course I am, that’s my job,” she said, hip-checking them as she hopped off the ledge. “Let me get out of this gear and I’ll book us a space.”

Finding a room was easy enough and soon they were wrapping their fists, stripped down to their colour-coded workout gear. Out of armour, there was two foot and spare change between them, not to mention the couple hundred pounds of muscle. They couldn’t be more different, really—bulk and strength versus speed and dexterity.

Had she wanted to, she could have run circles around them just dodging their strikes and baiting them. Usually, that was her strategy, but to do so would put too much strain on their still recovering body and that wasn’t the objective, here. It wasn’t about _beating_ them; it was _about_ them. Letting them wear down some of the restless energy that had been plaguing them for months.

PT wasn’t enough for them; they’d made that fact clear many times. PT wasn’t designed to alleviate their pent-up energy, it was designed to help repair the damage done by months of stagnation.

The physical damage, that is.

“Alright, big guy,” Connie said, settling into stance. “Show me what you got.”

To call Maine ‘rusty’ would be putting it lightly. The raw skill was still there—you didn’t destroy years of training like theirs in just a few months—but every flaw in Maine’s fighting style was amplified tenfold. Their swings went wider, they moved slower, and their attempts to use their size to their advantage failed when they realised that they didn’t know their body as well as they had before.

It frustrated them enough that they almost left. They got as far as half-unwrapping one of their fists before Connie calmed them down, with hands on their forearms and a warm smile.

She wrapped their fist back up and then darted between their legs, kicking them in the back.

Maine huffed, but they came for her, just as she planned.

Connie dodged and feinted and weaved around the room, around them. Their wide haymakers and sharp uppercuts struggled to connect with someone so small and quick, always a step ahead and out of their reach, but that didn’t mean that they never did.

They blocked a kick and swung a punch and she hit the ground hard enough to feel the air expelled from her lungs.

Maine signed a quick, ‘You good?’ before they offered her a hand.

“Yeah, I’m fine. You still pack quite a punch, big guy,” Connie said, taking the hand— and using it to throw herself up onto their shoulders, legs wrapped around them. “Need to watch your back though.”

Maine rolled their eyes with a gruff chuckle and plucked her off.

They got into the rhythm of things, after a while. Connie and Maine bounced off each other, the brains and the brawn, and Maine relaxed more with every passing round. Connie watched the restless energy flow off of them with every punch, every impact, every sharp turn to track her. Nimble and pumped full of energy supplements, she wore them out in exactly the way they needed to be worn out.

When the slot ended, they held themself looser. They looked a little more like themself and a lot less lost.

“See? That was fun,” Connie said, hip-checking them. The impact only reached their thigh.

Maine grunted, but there was the curve of a smile on their face. ‘Was fun. Don’t tell Wash.’

“I won’t, I won’t,” she said. It wasn’t like they talked often these days, anyway. “But, you see, sometimes, you have to bend the rules a little, Maine.”

They ruffled her hair as Sigma flickered into life in front of them, his own stance now more relaxed.

“ _We will keep that in mind, CT,_ ” he said, with a smile.

Connie smiled back and put the shiver that ran up her spine down to the chill in the room.

Those were the moments she lived for, the moments that reached between the bars of the cage-like routine that had become her ‘normal’ and tried their best to drag her free. None of those moments had the key, of course; she could only take them in her outstretched hand and hold onto them for a little while before they slipped away and she fell back into her reality. A reality that was built on so many lies that even those moments felt like they were balancing precariously on the edge of a cliff, waiting for something to nudge them over. Waiting to fall.

She couldn’t leave. No, she was barely hanging on when she had those moments to look forward to. She couldn’t imagine how tough it would be if she had to abandon them, if she had to leave behind South and Maine and Wash and the scant moments of Alpha Squad camaraderie.

She _wouldn’t_ leave. She had the situation under control. She did.

Needles talked about it much less than she thought about it, much to her surprise. He’d managed to behave himself, biting his tongue even when she could see in his eyes that he wanted to say something. He mentioned it offhand, sometimes, an odd:

“ _When you leave—_ ” here and a, “— _once we get you out—_ ” there, but some well-placed elbows from Rat nipped those comments in the bud quickly enough.

CT didn’t tell them about the growing feelings of paranoia and unease that plagued every night she spent out of her room, whether that was on the floor or the deck. Let alone that it had extended into her everyday life, affecting her every time she stepped onto the training floor even in the light of day.

She’d extended her alert range and re-clipped her loops at the first opportunity after the incident with Florida. She had double-checked and triple-checked all of her equipment. She had spent less time on the deck between check-ins. She had done everything she could do to protect herself and telling Needles would only end in another lecture that no sharp elbows would dissuade.

The unease twisted uncomfortably in her gut that night. She’d shrugged on a jacket to hide the way her hair stood on end at the slightest provocation, her own nerves betraying her. The observation deck could get cold, she had a perfect excuse in that regard, but it had garnered her strange looks from Rat and Needles anyway.

“So we have a timeline,” she said, scanning down the now neatly organised collection of files on her dog-tag drive. “Everything started with Beta—Texas. Then he started experimenting, split off a bunch of completely non-viable fragments that he has stored in an off-site facility. _Then_ he traced the ‘Engineer’ back to you guys and—”

“ _—he made it his personal mission in life to fuck us in the ass, repeatedly, without lube, until he got what he wanted. And what he wanted is apparently, like, everything,_ ” Rat said, helpfully. Rat 2 squeaked in agreement.

“Yes, Rat, that’s exactly what I was going to say.”

“ _Knew it._ ”

“Anyway,” CT said, unable to even muster the smile she’d usually have given them in return, “he was able to split off viable AI at last and repair the only surviving AI from the previous wave of experiments and now… we’re here.”

Her scrolling stopped near the bottom of the list at a file titled ‘Chi’.

CT chewed the inside of her cheek, hovering her cursor over the file. Last edited earlier that day.

Its contents should have, in some ways, eased the inescapable apprehension. Inside, there was an unspoken promise that they expected her to be around for a long time yet. Or, at least, a few more months.

“In a couple of weeks, they’ll be splitting off an AI made of the Alpha’s empathy, like I told you before,” she said. “That AI has a name now. Chi. It has a file of its own. After that, they intend to split off Trust. Then there’s a little list of possible fragments that they haven’t placed in order yet.”

“ _Such as?_ ” Needles asked.

“Greed, Love, Happiness, Fear, Pride, Restraint, Curiosity, _Memory_ … there’s a lot. If their schedule remains consistent, this will take them months, maybe years, to complete. Only Empathy has a scenario planned so far,” she said, running down the list.

“ _What scenario?_ ”

CT swallowed. “Emotional overstimulation. Surround him with negative emotions coming from people he cares about or feels responsible for, with the help of Gamma. Overwhelm him until he decides he has to stop caring, or at least… stop feeling that way. Until he decides to cut off his ability to empathise and withdraws himself, to try and avoid being hurt in the future. They’ve run simulations of it, they think it’ll work, based on his previous responses to stimuli.”

Her stomach did another flip. It was a type of overstimulation she knew too well.

“ _That… is fucked up,_ ” Rat said.

“It really is,” CT said with a sigh. Her teeth caught at her bottom lip, her cursor hovering over the administrative data at the top of Chi’s file. “Okay, so, there’s another thing—”

“ _That’s documented in your latest packet, right?_ ” Needles interrupted. Rat elbowed him. “ _What was_ that _one for?_ ”

“ _One, you interrupted her. Two, you didn’t agree it was fucked up!_ ”

Needles set them with a look.

“ _Of course it’s fucked up, but how fucked up it is isn’t what matters the most here,”_ he said. _“What matters is that splitting an AI like that is a violation of the damn Cole Protocol, we don’t have the luxury of getting hung up on the details beyond documenting them_.”

“Guys, I don’t have—”

“ _You can say the sentence ‘it’s fucked up’! That takes two seconds! Have you abandoned your principles so much that you can’t spend two seconds on an agreement that torturing someone is fucked up?_ ”

“ _It’s an AI. It’s not a—_ ”

“ _—it’s a human mind! It’s sapient! This wouldn’t work if it—_ ”

“Guys!” CT said, louder this time. Was this what it was like when she and Needles argued? “I’m _trying_ to tell you something important if you’d just _listen_ to—”

_BEEP. BEEP. BEEP._

Proximity alert.

CT’s attention snapped to the cameras. It could have been nothing, it could have been just another person passing by on the edge of the perimeter, another false alarm that she could dismiss and ignore, it _could_ have been—

But it wasn’t.

The feed was silent, but she knew the faint whistle that drifted down the hallway anywhere.

The fighting stopped. “ _…Connie?_ _What’s—?_ ”

CT slammed the PC shut. He was down the hall and around a corner—a one-way route, the only way in and out of the observation deck, but she had time. Not a lot of it, but time.

Time for— time for _what?_ It was one way. If she left, he’d know she was here. If she stayed, he’d see her.

 _Hide the PC._ That was what she could do. Hide the PC.

She scrambled to her feet and across the room, wrenching off the vent cover and stashing the PC inside. Stilling her shaking hands, she replaced the cover and stood up. She scanned the dark room as the whistling got closer and she breathed—in and out, in and out.

Leaving was impossible. Being seen was out of the question. Her band placed her in her bed, in her room, asleep. He wouldn’t be there in the bowels of the ship if he didn’t know _something._ If he came in, if he saw her—

It’d all be over.

The whistling grew louder. CT’s gaze fell on the edge of the platform.

_The lip._

Her palms felt too sweaty; they slipped as she grasped the guardrail and pulled herself up, then over onto the edge so she was dangling above the abyss. She didn’t dare look down. Not for long enough to truly see the pitch-black space beneath her, so dark that the sheen of the glass she’d hit if she fell was invisible.

She felt for the lip with her feet. It was so narrow. One wrong step and—

_Don’t think about that._

She let go of the rail and dragged herself down into the lip.

The next thing she heard was the hiss of the door and the cheerful whistling of Florida, bright and clear.

CT held her breath.

The momentary burst of light from the hallway disappeared.

Slow, languid footsteps echoed around the empty room, almost drowned out by the high-pitched whistling that burrowed through CT’s ears into her spine and made her shudder. Goosebumps rose beneath her jacket and she adjusted her grip, flinching at the faint sound of material rustling.

The footsteps didn’t stop, nor did they speed up. Florida crossed the deck above her at his own pace, the whistling and the steps getting louder and louder as he got closer and closer.

Her fingers ached.

She timed a fresh intake of breath with the peak of his whistling and almost choked on it, when the whistling stopped a second later. The platform vibrated, just slightly, as he stopped directly above her.

The sound of metal scraping against metal, of something sharp dragged along the guardrail, pierced her skull.

“Huh, now isn’t that strange,” he said, voice ricocheting off the glass walls. He tapped his foot. “I suppose the signal was better scrambled than we thought.”

The scraping ended with a sharp flick, the point of a blade against the metal of the rail.

Her lungs _burned._ It felt like they’d contracted down to the size of a fist in her chest, desperate for a breath she couldn’t take.

 _Leave. For fuck’s sake,_ leave _!_

The tapping continued for another long ten seconds before the footsteps began to move away and the whistling began again.

CT held her breath until the door opened and closed, finally gasping for air so sharply that she almost lost her grip on the lip. Her chest heaved and her lungs _burned_ and she tried not to hyperventilate, but it was a battle she’d lost from the moment she started fighting it.

Her fingers ached. Fuck, her fingers _ached_. Every digit was screaming that she couldn’t hold on, but she fought that battle fiercely and she won it—for a while.

The muscles in her legs began to cramp twenty minutes in.

The tips of her fingers were numb by forty.

She waited there, in the dead silence of the pitch-black observatory, for an hour. An hour of gradually mounting agony, of her heart racing in her chest and her lungs burning and her limbs failing. Adrenaline coursed through her veins amplified every stab of pain, inching her closer and closer to the edge of a less literal descent into the abyss. The inevitable meltdown was held off by desperation and a will to survive that surmounted the need to break down, but it could only hold for so long.

An hour. Only then did she pull herself free.

She nearly plummeted from the edge when her arms faltered and folded, barely catching herself with her knee hooked around the rail. When she finally dragged herself back onto solid ground she collapsed in an undignified heap, loose limbed and shaking.

Face buried in her arms, she forced back tears and curled her hands into fists so tight she almost couldn’t feel the pain.

 _Get up._ _Get up and move._ Move _, goddammit._

On her first step, her legs almost collapsed beneath her. She caught herself on the rail and steadied herself, waited for the rush of blood and relief to fade before she took another step.

It was easier, after that. Adrenaline and fear carried her the rest of the way from the deck to her room, ears pricked for the sound of whistling and checking every corridor before she set foot in it.

Shaky hands typed in the keycode she knew by heart—wrong, three times—and she all but fell into the room, collapsing with her back against the door. By some miracle, South stayed asleep, her soft, rhythmic breathing the only sound in an otherwise silent room. Familiar. Comforting. She’d made it back.

CT exhaled and Connie choked on a breath, biting her fist to muffle something between a scream and a sob.

Oh god. Oh _god._

_I almost got caught._


	20. Lines Drawn Between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0357a265ae9403017b95dbdb488d528b/048ca6fa36dc5992-43/s640x960/1833c657507ddcb0ac0ea0b9b9c8c101cac64f8e.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

She didn’t remember pulling herself into bed, nor the sleepless hours that followed. Her pillow was stained with tears and she didn’t remember those, either. When her silent alarm rang out in the back of her mind, she forced herself to get up, flip over her pillow and make her bed as if she’d never slept in it.

Connie sat on the edge of South’s bed and kissed her forehead, then got up as if she’d been there the whole time. She wiped her face. She tapped her shrike three times. She brushed her teeth. She got dressed. She checked her schedule.

Go through the motions. Pretend that everything was fine. Let autopilot take control.

Stepping into the hallway felt like walking across a minefield with no guide.

Across the hall, mere metres away, was the door to Florida and Wyoming’s shared bunk. Connie stood there, back against the metal behind her, and stared at it. Waiting, for something to happen or for nothing to happen, she wasn’t sure which, she lingered there much longer than she should have.

Would he have seen her come back?

_No,_ she told herself. She had waited for a reason and she knew the blind spots in the hallway by heart. A loop in such a trafficked area was irresponsible, she’d had no choice but to learn other ways of concealing her presence. She was fine. She was _fine._

Finally, she willed her legs to move and forced the autopilot on.

She knew it had worked when she found herself staring at the feeds in the hub, cup in her hand.

Act normal. All she had to do was act normal and get through the day. Then she could plan. Then she could—

What could she do?

What in the _galaxy_ could she do?

She couldn’t contact Needles or Rat.

The last thing they had seen was an uncharacteristically panicked CT slamming the PC closed and cutting the call off without a word. She would have done anything to send even a _single_ message to tell them she was alive, that she hadn’t been found, but the risk was too high. If Command was tracing her transmissions, then not only could they find her, but they would grow one step closer to tracing those on the receiving end with every attempt at contact.

Bumping up security wouldn’t be enough, not this time.

So, she went radio silent.

Days went by and before she knew it, she’d missed her next check-in. For all Rat and Needles knew, she had become another statistic whose death would be disguised by the Project as something tragic but unavoidable, or Command had thrown her in the brig with the brand of ‘traitor’ plastered across her forehead.

She couldn’t tell her contacts differently and she had no idea what they would do, whether they’d chalk it up to a lost cause or whether they’d do something stupid and try to rescue her—that seemed like something Needles would do, given the right push.

(He’d have taken that as a compliment, no matter how much it was intended as the opposite.)

She couldn’t tell them. So, what could she do?

She _could_ set up a fake transmission signal.

A dummy communication wrapped up tightly in all of her usual protections but aimed at an arbitrarily selected point in space. A red herring.

If they had been tracking her signals, if their intel on her was so complete that they had traced her to the observation deck, then to leave the channels empty of rogue communications would have only been suspicious. The silence would have been like waving a giant, flashing sign saying, ‘You almost caught me!’. It would have told them that they were on the right track and they would follow that track until they found her, sitting at the final stop.

They knew. The game she had to play now was damage control.

It took almost that entire week to find a decommissioned data-pad, tossed idly into the equipment disposal crate by some random soldier on board. She wiped it of all identifying data and set it up to transmit back towards one of the previous ‘Insurrectionist’ systems and left it in a vent somewhere, with its transmission signal re-routed through the servers on the observation deck.

As far as Command knew, their mole was right on schedule.

What else could she do?

She could keep up the illusion.

Despite every cell in her body _screaming_ danger, she set an alarm for the early hours and she dragged herself down to the training floor.

It was the same principle as before: don’t act as if they’d caught her doing something prohibited and suspicion would slide right over her. Her behaviour wasn’t suspect in isolation, but any perceived response to Florida’s watching eye would centre it squarely upon her. No one else knew that he was watching, no one else knew that he’d almost found the mole. As far as Command was concerned, she had to know just as little as everyone else.

So, she forced herself onto the floor and she pushed through her training, even as her paranoia spiked and her stomach turned and she collapsed to the floor, heaving her evening meal onto the grating.

She hadn’t thrown up in over a month, until then.

CT quaked and crumbled until only Connie was left behind, her arm over her face as she laid on her back on the ground. Vomit still burned the back of her throat and her mouth tasted disgusting, _bitter_. She laid there and she breathed deeply, grounded herself, and then she wrenched CT back from wherever she was hiding and CT pulled her back to her feet.

An hour. She only had to manage an hour.

CT could manage an hour.

That was what she could do. She knew how to put on a mask, by now. She knew how to fake her way through a day as if the world-shaking revelations she’d uncovered the night before were nothing more than a footnote. What difference did it make if that revelation was her impending discovery? That was a risk she’d been living with for months.

They didn’t know it was _her,_ that was what mattered. If they had, if their suspicions were anything more than suspicions, she’d have been dead long before Florida could find her. Mass’s death proved that. Command wasn’t scared to be overzealous, to cut off a potentially problematic mass with no consideration for the fact that it could be benign, or that the excision could cause more problems than it would solve.

They hadn’t been shy about trying to kill her before, after all. So no, somehow, they didn’t know.

At least, that was what she told herself. If she didn’t, then—

“Are you sure you’re okay, mischief?”

A fingernail dragged slowly around the skin behind her ear pulled Connie from her thoughts, back to the sensation of water pounding down against her from the shower overhead.

“What?” she said, sitting back slightly. South’s worried face was inches from hers.

“I said, are you sure you’re okay?” South said, running her fingernail back along the same path. A little shudder ran down Connie’s spine and she relaxed, comfortable in South’s lap on the wet room floor. Right. They were showering together. “You haven’t seemed… with it, this week, babe.”

“I’m fine,” Connie lied, pressing a kiss to South’s jaw. “Just… just tired. Lots of training, lots of work… like you said before, they’re kind of running us ragged right now.”

“They sure fuckin’ have been,” South grumbled. She shook her head, cupping Connie’s cheek in her hand. “You sure? Is that _really_ it?” 

Connie’s stomach twisted into knots. Another thing she couldn’t do: tell South.

“That’s it,” she said, leaning into South’s hand. “I’m sorry I keep worrying you. I guess I think I’m tougher than I am.”

“Babe, you’re plenty fuckin’ tough. This place wears _me_ down, and we all know I’m the toughest bitch around,” South said, flashing her signature confident grin. Connie giggled and held onto her a little tighter. “It just sucks. Not being able to do anything to help.”

“ _This_ helps,” Connie said, leaning so that their lips brushed together.

South pressed into the contact, fingers curling around the back of Connie’s head. Her lips were warm and slippery from the water, but Connie didn’t care; she wrapped her arms tight around South’s neck and drank her in, desperate to be grounded.

When breath finally forced them to part, they rested with foreheads together.

“Mm, true,” South said, fingers dancing up Connie’s spine. “But much as I love _that_ , I wish I could _actually_ fucking help. Stop you being so fucking wrecked all the time.”

“Wrecking me helps too,” Connie said.

South gave a token chuckle, but the amusement didn’t reach her eyes. “Now you’re just deflecting, mischief.”

Dammit.

“…maybe a little,” Connie sighed, dropping her head against her shoulder. “I— I just don’t have anything else to offer, I’m sorry. You do help. Not just like that, but— but by asking. By giving a shit. It makes me wish I could do more for _you._ ”

“You let me rant at you about my dickass brother and the Dickrector and like— everything fucking else,” South said. She rested the side of her head against Connie’s. “Guess we’re both just doing our best, huh?”

“Guess so.”

She could have done more, in an ideal world. She could have told South that what she saw happening with her brother wasn’t just in her head, that the Director was manipulating and fragmenting the agents in his program just as seamlessly as he was the AI. She could have stopped lying, told her. She could have gotten South away from it all.

But this wasn’t an ideal world.

Connie clung to South and focused on the feeling of the water, beating down against her skin. She exhaled.

“We have that supply stop coming up,” South said, after a long moment of silence. “Maybe you’ll feel a little better, finally getting off this damn ship and into civilisation again.”

“Military stations hardly count as civilisation.”

“Closer than this shithole.”

“Mm, true,” Connie mumbled. She nuzzled her nose against South’s pulse and inhaled. “I’ll give you that.”

She had almost forgotten about the upcoming stop, less than a week away. _Shepherd Outpost_ was a small military station on the edge of the system they were due to leave. They’d stop there for a resupply and refuelling, ahead of another slipspace jump to chase down another ‘Insurrectionist’ target. They hadn’t had a jump that required cryo-pods in a while, usually it would have been a prime moment for her to continue her work but— well.

It would be of little benefit to her this time.

The station, however…

It would have communication terminals. Unconnected to any Project Freelancer server and designed for UNSC personnel to call home, their security was minimal, and she’d only need minutes. Just a few minutes.

Connie sighed in relief. “Maybe I will. Maybe that’ll be just what I need.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be _right_ back, I swear,” Connie said, peeling off from South—or trying to, as South held onto her hand with a ridiculous grin on her face. “ _South_ , we have two days. I just need an hour, then I’ll meet you at our room. You know what to get, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what to get,” South said, playfully tugging her back to her. Connie rolled her eyes but couldn’t help but smile as she stole a quick kiss. “Piles of snacks. New photo disc battery. Lube. Hair dye. More snacks. Alcohol—”

Connie cut her off with another peck. “That’s enough, I get the message,” she said, pulling her hand free at last. “An hour. At most. Then we have all stop.”

South shook her head and waved her off. “I heard you. Go on. Though— hey, what _is_ our room?”

“E7-2!” Connie called, turning to walk backwards for a second. “See you there!”

Connie turned the corner and broke into a sprint.

She’d looked up the location of every communication terminal in advance. They were publicly available from any server on the _Invention_. What she needed was the set of terminals in an isolated corner of the station, far away from the most densely occupied areas. With the map and hallway codes memorised, she was there in minutes.

A row of terminals, all surrounded by soundproof boxes, stretched out in front of her. Empty, just as she’d hoped.

Connie opened the door and CT locked herself inside.

She knew Rat’s communication key by heart. Patching herself through was easy; the terminals were already equipped for superluminal communications by default and the key was UNSC-associated. It was only suspicious to Command.

The worst part would be the waiting, there was no way that they would pick up first—

The screen flashed on.

“ _Oh shit on my dick—NEEDLES!”_

CT blinked and let out a startled laugh. “Rat! I— I didn’t think you’d pick up so quickly!”

“ _Are you_ kidding _me?_ ” Rat said, arms flailing wildly. Rat 2 struggled to cling on. “ _I haven’t left this computer alone since you disappeared on us! I shoved one of the others into the chair if I needed a piss!_ ”

“I— did not need to know that,” CT said, unable to help her smile.

“ _Well tough shit because you know it now. Uh, though, heads up, Needles is a little bit—_ ”

“ _Connie!_ ” Needles exclaimed, bursting into frame. Relief flashed across his features and his shoulders slumped, only to tighten up again seconds later. “ _Where the_ hell _were you? You disappeared, you missed check-in— we thought you had been captured or_ worse _!_ ”

CT’s hands balled into fists. Well, she hadn’t missed _that_.

“I know, I’m sorry. I almost did get caught,” she said, holding up a hand to stop the inevitable rant before it left Needles’ mouth, “but I _didn’t._ I just had to be careful afterwards. I couldn’t contact you or they’d either find me, or they’d find you.”

“ _Then where are you now?_ ”

“A space station. Public terminal. There’s no way to trace it back to me,” CT said.

“ _What happened?_ ” Needles asked, sitting down. “ _You didn’t say a word and then you were gone. Our only slight comfort was that you’d shut it off yourself._ ”

“Florida happened. He was tracing my outgoing signal. He— Needles, let me _finish_ ,” CT said, glaring. Needles shut his mouth. “He triggered my proximity alarm and I had just enough time to hide the PC and then get myself into a hiding place under the deck. He didn’t see me. He assumed that the signal had been scrambled from elsewhere and left.”

She pulled the sleeves of her jacket down, grasping them in her palms, and suppressed the nausea.

“ _So, they know?_ ”

“They know that _someone_ is still leaking information. They don’t know who.”

“ _But—_ ”

“If they knew it was me, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. I’d be dead. Ejected into space, maybe,” CT said, gesturing vaguely. “That sounds like something they’d do.”

“ _This isn’t a joking matter, Connie.”_

“I’m not saying it to be funny, _Needles_ ,” CT countered. “It’s a fact. If they wanted me dead, they have the means to make me disappear before I knew what hit me. The fact that I’m alive means they either don’t suspect me at all, or if they do, then they’re not willing to dispose of me until they’re _sure._ ”

Needles glowered at her. “ _That isn’t reassuring._ ”

“ _She’s pretty indispensable. Aren’t you the only intelligence agent they have now?_ ” Rat said.

“The only one who works with the data, yes. They’d have a much harder time tracking you guys down without me around.”

“ _So, what? We’re just relying on the idea that they_ might _not kill you until they have undeniable proof?_ ” Needles said, folding his arms.

“Yes. That’s all we can do.”

“ _Except get you out of there._ ”

CT sighed, fingernails catching at her scar. “Which _still_ isn’t an option. There’s still information I need to gather—I can’t waste time on the details now, but there’s big things coming up.”

“ _But—_ ”

“ _Needles I swear to fuck, if you argue with her again when we_ just _found out she’s still alive, I’m going to shove your head so far up your ass that I can loop you around and do it again,_ ” Rat said, punching him in the arm.

“…well that was vivid,” CT said. “Thank you, Rat.”

“ _I pride myself in being as clear as possible,_ ” Rat said. They stared at Needles and he sighed.

“ _So what do we do?_ ” he said.

“I can’t contact you from the ship anymore. I’ll continue to put out dummy transmissions, so that they don’t realise I know, and I’ll keep working whenever I can,” CT said. She glanced at the clock. “We’ll have to organise another way for me to get intel to you.”

“ _What about in-person drops?_ ” Needles said. When CT raised a brow, he continued. “ _We could fake your capture._ ”

“That… could work,” CT said, tapping her fingers against the terminal. “Not… more than once, probably, we’d have to figure out something else after that but… we’re jumping soon, not immediately but— soon. We have a few of your facilities lined up. I can let you know when I know which works.”

“ _But you said—_ ”

“I can mask a quick transmission by bombarding the system with multiple false transmissions. I just have to be careful. Trust that I know what I’m doing, Needles,” CT said, giving him a look. “Please.”

“ _…fine_ ,” he said, as he always did. At least without the weekly check-ins she’d hear his arguments much less often. There was a silver lining to everything, she supposed. “ _How will we get instructions back to you?_ ”

“You won’t. I’ll tell you what to do and then I’ll trust that you can do it.”

“ _I don’t like this,_ ” Needles said, as if that wasn’t clear in the taut line of his shoulders and his folded arms. “ _Not one bit._ ”

“ _Tough titties, dickprick. Her life on the line, she makes the rules,_ ” Rat said.

“What they said,” CT said, pointing at them. “Okay— I have to go. I have to be back at the room before South is.”

“ _Are you sure you’ll be alright? That no one’s seen you?_ ” Needles said.

“Yes, I’m fine. There’s no one here and if anyone’s going to be getting in trouble after this trip, it’s York, because I’m _pretty_ sure I saw Delta over his shoulder when we got off the ship,” CT said, shaking her head. “Anyway, I really— I have to go, I’m sorry. I’ll see you… whenever I see you.”

A beat of silence sat heavy with an unspoken knowing lingering in the air.

“ _Take care, Connie,_ ” Needles said, at last, his features stripped of any argument. “ _We’ll see you soon._ ”

“ _No dying,_ ” Rat said. “ _Or I’ll re-write all your code._ ”

CT mock-gasped. “That’s a _threat._ ”

“ _Damn fucking right it is._ ”

CT laughed, waved, and then she cut off the call. Her smile faded.

As if this work wasn’t lonely enough as it was.

_Goddammit_.

An hour hadn’t passed. E7-2 was empty when she arrived, another modest room with two bunks and a small window, looking out into space. Connie wasted no time in tossing her bag onto one of the beds, unpacking her one additional outfit and night clothes.

Dropping onto the edge of the bed, she unlaced her boots and tossed them to the foot of it. Her coat followed quickly after, then her shirt, her pants…

Soon, she was stripped to her underwear. That was better.

Connie flopped back onto the mattress, arms splayed at her sides.

South wouldn’t be long. Until then, it was a fight to keep her mind from wandering to places she didn’t want to drift, not today. The call had been the one hard thing she had to do. The stop was meant to be a break, even for her. _Especially_ for her.

Though if she really had seen Delta… well, this was certainly going to be an interesting stop, if nothing else. All the better to keep her occupied, she supposed.

The door opened a few minutes later and South’s duffel landed next to Connie’s.

“You dressed like that for me, or just for comfort?”

Connie sat up. South was leaning against the door, arms folded and a smirk on her face.

“Maybe it’s both,” Connie teased in return, propped up on her elbows. “Get everything we need?”

“Yep,” South said, holding up a bag that looked stuffed to bursting. “Everything we need. You do what you needed to do?”

“All done, yeah.” Connie beckoned her over and South came gladly, dropping the bag at the foot of the bed beside Connie’s discarded clothes. South leaned down and Connie met her half-way, holding the kiss for a short but welcome moment. “I’ll re-dye your hair before we go out tonight.”

“Mm’kay,” South hummed, pressing a kiss to her jaw. “Hey, you want a massage? You look all fuckin’ tense and shit. Maybe falling asleep on the floor again last night was a bad idea.”

It had been the best idea. Connie didn’t know if she’d have managed to sleep if they hadn’t, but she didn’t— _couldn’t_ —say that.

“God, yes please,” she said instead, rolling over onto her front. “I feel like I could snap if someone poked me wrong.”

She heard another pair of boots hit the floor and the bed creaked under her, South’s weight settling just beneath her hips. Warm, firm hands ran along her back and she exhaled, getting comfortable. South’s touch was strong and practiced, working away the tension that had coiled in Connie’s muscles after days of stress and exertion.

“Wow, you really are just a little ball of tension, huh?” South said, at the same time as warm breath and soft lips tickled the back of her neck. “Clearly I’m going to have to work harder to get you to relax. You bring that dress for tonight?”

“The little black one? Of course,” Connie said, moaning quietly as South released a knot in her lower back.

“Perfect. Didn’t get to appreciate it last time.”

Connie opened an eye, brow raised. “You appreciated it plenty, if I remember correctly.”

“Not _last_ time. The time before that, yeah, absolutely, but last stop we didn’t get to do shit, remember? Got shafted on our leave for that stupid inspection.”

Connie frowned. Oh. Right.

Was her sense of time that messed up?

South kissed the wrinkle in her brow away and loosened her upper back with the kind of firm pressure that made her nerves spark with pleasure. Hands flapping slightly against the mattress, Connie’s mind was pulled to other places.

They arrived at the _Ale-Keg-47_ late, that evening, after South’s ‘appreciation’ of the little black dress proved to be quite the distraction. Connie’s hair was out of place and South had done nothing to hide the already growing hickies on her throat, preferring to wear them as a badge of honour. No one cared, of course; they’d all seen more than their fair share of marks on the other agents’ bodies in the locker room. Modesty kind of went out the window, in a set-up like theirs.

“I _still_ can’t believe you actually brought Delta,” North said, as they approached the tables Alpha Squad had gathered around. “I didn’t think you were actually serious when you said you were going to.”

“I can believe it,” Wash said, already nursing a bottle of beer. “Because he’s him.”

“I resent that,” York said, gesturing overenthusiastically. His drink sloshed over the rim of the glass.

“Resent _what?_ Being told you’re yourself?”

“I’d resent that if I was him,” South said, dropping down into a seat and pulling Connie into her lap. “Being him must suck _so_ much.”

“Nice to see you too, South,” York said. South flipped him the bird. “You’re rude. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Your mom did last night.”

Wash snickered. North shook his head, face in his hand.

York blinked at her for a long moment and then continued, not dignifying her with a response, “Anyway. Of _course_ I brought Delta. The AI deserve to have a little fun too, isn’t that right D?”

Delta appeared over his shoulder. “ _I believe Agent York is attempting to engage me in ‘rebellious behaviour’, which he considers ‘fun’. However, I am unsure that I am capable of deriving entertainment from human interactions of which I have no real understanding._ ”

York stopped miming along with a puppet-hand when Delta looked at him.

“Which is exactly _why_ you’re here, D. You need to understand us humans better if you’re going to help us out. Get to know our quirks.”

“ _That is not why I’m here,_ ” Delta said, frankly. Not giving York time to retort, he said, “ _However, I am equally unsure why all of these questions are being directed towards us when Sigma is also present._ ”

Sigma flickered into life on the table in front of Maine.

“ _Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little,_ ” Sigma said, his eyes on Connie—not talking directly to Delta, circumventing the rule that prevented him from doing so. “ _I am acting as Agent Maine’s assistive device. I am here for their benefit._ ”

Maine grunted. Connie wasn’t sure if it was in agreement or denial.

That was when Carolina finally arrived at the table. She took one look at the two AI and turned on her heel, heading for the bar.

“Look at that, dickshit,” South said, jerking her thumb towards Carolina. “You drove her to drink. Immediately.”

York chuckled sheepishly. “Oops?”

The bar was thankfully empty except for the Freelancers and though the air quickly filled with chatter, a thick layer of tension lay beneath it. Everyone was tired and on edge, being dragged along in the wake of Project Freelancer’s constant advancement.

More agents had died since their last stop, and less had come to the bar. Delta Squad was all but decimated, and Gamma Squad had taken more than enough hits of their own. Those who remained had little affinity left for the upper squads, choosing to huddle up in a corner and chatter amongst themselves. Even Beta Squad seemed more isolated, the lines drawn between the squads starker than ever before.

Alpha Squad was intact, of course—but no one knew how close they had come to losing an agent themselves, not so long ago, and Connie was there to do everything she could to forget.

South sent North to get herself and Connie some drinks, burying her face against Connie’s shoulder. Connie held her hands where they rested on her stomach and exhaled, letting her head fall back. Her mind tried its best to wander to darker thoughts, but she pushed them away.

_Relax_. She just needed to relax.

It was a little easier with a drink in her hand. North and Carolina returned to the table at the same time and Connie thanked the former, accepting her customary fruity gin and taking a sip. Carolina sat herself down beside North and pointedly ignored York, at least until the alcohol began to do its work as a social lubricant.

“What is it actually like, having an AI?” Connie asked, half-way into her glass. “I realise I’ve never actually asked and well, I better ask you now before you get him confiscated when you get back on board.”

“Ooo, _burn_ ,” South said, snickering.

“One, that’s not even a burn,” York said, pointing his glass at South. “Two,” he pointed at Connie, “to answer your question, ye of little faith, it’s pretty cool, really. Kind of a pain in the ass sometimes; you know how Delta likes to run his probabilities and it’s not like you can just get away from that. It kinda takes practice, to keep things separate.”

“ _Agent York has successfully established several ‘walls’, of sorts, to prevent me from accessing certain areas,_ ” Delta said. “ _It did, however, take some time._ ”

Carolina’s eyes flicked to Sigma. She took a swig of her drink.

“If I want real privacy, I pull him, so it’s no big deal,” York said with a shrug. “He helps keep me on track. Follows my tangents better than even I do because he can see them happening in real time, which is really handy when your thoughts like to ricochet around like a rogue ping-pong ball shot from a rocket launcher.”

“He’s done nothing to help your foot-in-mouth syndrome though,” Wash said.

“Of course not,” North said. “That’s terminal.”

“ _I am unfamiliar with this ‘foot-in-mouth’ syndrome, perhaps you could explain the symptoms to me, so I know what to look out for?_ ” Delta said, serious as ever.

“Oh great, you’re teaming up on me now,” York said, downing what was his second pint. “Maybe this _was_ a mistake.”

“Careful, drink too much and you might get him drunk by proxy,” North said.

“That’s actually the idea,” York said, already standing up to head for the bar.

Carolina’s head shot up. “ _What._ ”

“I wanna see what happens if I get drunk with Delta in my brain. Y’know, for science,” he said, casually. “You know how the Director likes his experiments.”

“ _No_ ,” Carolina said, “absolutely not. These AI are pieces of highly sophisticated and delicate military equipment, you can _not_ —”

South cut her off. “No, no, this might be the first good idea that fucker’s ever had.”

“I don’t think an experiment with one subject is really an experiment, by scientific standards,” Connie said.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure Maine isn’t physically capable of getting drunk, so I’m all we’ve got,” York said, backing away from the table. Immediately, he caught his hip on a chair and he turned around with a grunt of pain, finally making for the bar.

Maine grunted, raising their hands. ‘Can’t. He’s right.’

“Like, not at all?” South asked. She slumped back, pulling Connie with her. “Well that must fucking suck.”

They shrugged. ‘Don’t care. Not my thing.’

“It’d probably be a worse idea to get Sigma drunk than Delta anyway,” Carolina said, tracing her fingertip around the rim of her glass. Everyone looked at her. “He’s on fire. Fire, alcohol…”

“That… was terrible,” Wash said, attracting a firm look and a raised eyebrow. “…is what I would say if you weren’t my CO.”

Carolina hid her smirk in her drink.

“I’m going to go make that dickhead buy something harder than fucking beer, get this show on the road,” South said, kissing Connie’s head and lifting her effortlessly from her lap onto Maine’s. “Hold her until I get back.”

“ _South,_ ” Connie said with a giggle, leaning back against Maine. They shook their head and patted hers, then made sure she was comfortable.

When York and South returned, she had a tray of shots and he had a look of regret on his face that had everyone laughing. There was no backing out—according to him, at least. The others did offer him the opportunity, but he didn’t seem to think his so-called pride could withstand it.

So, he started downing shots and Delta started reciting his blood alcohol content.

Connie watched the spectacle with a genuine and indulgent curiosity she had almost thought she’d lost, when her natural inquisitiveness and desire to understand had been swallowed up by the work she was doing.

York made a funny scrunched face whenever he downed the burning shots, regret written in every wrinkled line of the expression and the way he coughed after. Delta, for his part, didn’t seem to care at all; he continued to recite York’s current alcohol intake without any sign of glitching or slurring, completely unaffected by York’s growing inebriation.

“He’s going to have a hangover in the morning and nothing to show for it,” North said, shaking his head.

York flipped him off.

“I still have ears,” he said, slurring just slightly. He grabbed the last full shot on the tray and threw it back, slamming the glass down. “ _There._ If he’s not drunk now, he’s not going to be.”

He collapsed back into his seat and kicked his feet up on the table. Carolina pushed them down.

“So howsit feel, D?” he asked, poking Delta’s hologram. Delta dematerialised and reappeared out of his reach. “Aww c’mon, don’t be like that!”

“ _I do not know that I am equipped to explain how something ‘feels’,_ ” Delta said. “ _That is a very abstract concept._ ”

“He sounds just like he always does, York. I think you just got yourself hammered for no reason,” Connie said with a quiet laugh. South snickered behind her, sounding much too proud of herself.

“How are we supposed to know? It’s not like we can tell him to try and walk in a straight line,” Wash said. “He’s an AI. And he’s not having any trouble with his hologram thingy.”

Carolina rolled her eyes and sat forward. “Hey Delta, what’s 2x2?”

“ _A box._ ”

Everyone stared at Delta.

“…how about 3x27?” Wash asked, narrowing his eyes.

Without missing a beat, Delta answered: “ _A goat._ ”

Connie burst into giggles. Carolina leaned back in her chair, arms folded, ready to watch what she’d started. York lifted his head just to _stare_ at his AI, though a goofy, drunken grin soon spread across his face.

“Okay, the first one, I could kind of see his logic, but—a _goat?_ ” Wash said, blinking. “That— that makes no sense.”

“Oh no, it does to him; I just saw him go through the whoooole thought process, rapid fire. Had something to do with— you know,” York waved his hands vaguely, “goat stuff. Populations.”

“Helpful,” Wash deadpanned. “Okay, Delta: what’s the probability that York falls flat on his face the second he tries to walk?”

Delta paused, that time, but his answer was a simple, sure: “ _Lamppost._ ”

“Okay _that_ one I can explain. He started with the math and then got distracted by a memory of me walking face first into a lamppost when I was drunk one time,” York said. He held up a finger to Wash, “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I could see it coming. Anyway, I guess he’s lost his ability to remain focused on one train of though— oh my god,” York’s eyes widened. “I got drunk and gave my AI my ADHD.”

The whole table burst out laughing.

The night quickly became a game of asking Delta questions and trying to follow the tangents he took to come to his nonsense answer, that to him seemed to make complete sense. Between questions, Delta spoke as coherently and formally as he always had. Only when you asked him something, whether it be maths related or not, did he begin to speak in riddles.

Connie’s personal favourite was when he answered ‘nine’ to the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ only to be swiftly corrected by the now equally drunken table with an ancient pop culture reference that poor Delta had somehow skipped over in his internal logic.

The whole time, Sigma stood on the opposite side of the table from Delta and just watched, a curious look on his face. Creativity went hand in hand with curiosity, after all.

Carolina was the first to retire for the night, releasing herself with the excuse of some minor diplomatic duties she was expected to take part in the next day. The single glass she’d spent all night nursing was abandoned on the table and she left with a multitude of eyes on her back, from all across the room.

From the table of Gammas and Deltas behind her, Connie heard whispers—something something AI, something something Texas. Carolina almost froze mid-step, her fists clenched, but strode past the gossiping without another thought.

Everyone started to filter away, after that.

Pleasantly buzzing, Connie pushed away all the serious observations and questions and problems to focus on enjoying the rest of her evening. She giggled at the way North had to escort York from the bar and smiled at Wash, who commandeered a piggyback from Maine without either hesitation or asking. When they left, she convinced South to stay a little while longer, stealing the corner of the booth-style seats from those who had already departed.

“You know, mischief,” South said, between idle, tipsy kisses as they sat there, Connie perched perfectly on South’s lap, “we never celebrated our anniversary.”

“We have an anniversary?” Connie teased.

South chuckled, nipping her bottom lip. “Fuck yeah we do. Whatever day it was when we actually got together.”

“ _Technically_ , there was no day. Because we were in slipspace. Where time doesn’t _really_ exist,” Connie said, stealing another kiss in retaliation. “So maybe this is our celebration. It’s _practically_ an anniversary. I mean, here we are, getting drunk in a stupidly named military bar in the middle of god knows where, after you challenged someone to an inappropriate amount of drinking… sound familiar?”

“A little,” South said, grinning. “Maybe we should go kiss in a hallway, instead. Really complete the night.”

“I have the layout of this place memorised—” (“Of course you do.”) “—I know a nice, private hallway.”

“You’re ridiculous,” South said as she scooped her up, much to Connie’s delight. Giggling, she latched onto her girlfriend and let her whisk her away, all thoughts of her impending struggles masked by the memory of a night before everything went wrong.

The consequences of York’s actions came back to bite him in two ways: first, in the horrible hangover that hit him like a truck when he woke up that morning; second, in the murderous wrath of the Director, who cared none for the fact that every sharp word was like stabbing York in the head.

But York was nothing if not a charmer—or, well, a talker, at least. As the Director reprimanded him, calling him on his recklessness and his—

“—disregard for UNSC protocol surrounding highly sophisticated and _expensive_ military equipment—”

—that probably should have been a cue that his first argument wasn’t going to go down well, he first argued that he had taken Delta with him to run ‘vital’ experiments. When, inevitably, the Director only grew angrier, he switched tracks and focused instead on how—

“—Delta’s kind of like an assistive device, like Sigma! You know, I got him so quickly after the whole eye thing—bummer, right?—that I never really learned how to compensate for the lack of depth perception on my own and I tend to walk into things, when I have him pulled, so really, having him on me was for the best, for everyone, really.”

He had flashed the Director his winning smile—the one that gave people just a _second’s_ pause before they punched him in the face—and the Director narrowed his eyes.

“Consider this a warning, Agent York,” he said, dismissing York and, by proxy, the crowd that had gathered to watch the display. “I will not be so lenient again.”

“You got off pretty lightly there, for what’s technically a Cole Protocol violation,” Wash said, as the crowd dispersed and they made their way into the ship.

York blinked at him. “…you’re pulling my leg, surely,” he said, glancing over at Connie for reassurance.

“If you stretched the spirit of the law, then…” Connie tapped her chin, tilting her head. “Wash _would_ know, he’s one of the only people I know who takes the directive to read it every day seriously.”

“…I hate you guys,” York said, shaking his head and walking away.

Wash flashed Connie a grin and she smiled back, high-fiving him when he offered his hand. The beat of awkward silence that followed wasn’t unexpected, though it was unfortunate, and they turned down separate corridors at the next crossroads.

Despite the exaggeration, Wash wasn’t exactly wrong. York had gotten off very lightly for what he had done—Maine and Sigma even more so, though Connie would soon learn that _they_ had received permission. Had York committed a similarly severe offence before he received Delta, his position on the board would have suffered; he could have dropped multiple spots with a single action.

However, that day, the board didn’t move at all.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise, but it put the final nail in the board’s coffin. If York taking the Director’s illegal AI onto a UNSC space station without permission or caution didn’t provoke the Director to change the board, then nothing would.

Connie frowned to herself. It hadn’t really mattered before but— now, that could cause her some problems, extend her timeline. _Goddammit_.

As it turned out, the reason that Maine and Sigma weren’t given so much as a warning was that Maine had been explicitly instructed not to pull Sigma for the stop. Maine was finally due to be evaluated to make their return to training and maintaining their integration with Sigma was apparently important; they had been advised that disrupting it for even two full days could cause problems once they returned.

What Sigma had _not_ been permitted to do was project or interact with people. However, as Sigma so concisely put it when Connie had asked: “ _What the Director doesn’t know, won’t get us in trouble._ ”

Maine spent two days undergoing every medical test under the sun. They hated every second of it, but pushed through motivated by the promise of _finally_ being free of their enforced inactivity. When every test came back to the satisfaction of the medics, they wasted no time in asking when they’d get their chance to re-enter the fray.

The next day, four months after Maine’s release from the infirmary, they pulled on their armour for the first time in even longer and made their way down to the floor.

The evaluation started with the basics. Maine ran through the standard, holographic target discs, their fists passing through them without restraint. Their strength had more than returned to them. Whilst the first round’s score was low, by the time they were told to move on, their numbers exceeded those recorded during their last session.

Connie wasn’t sure how much of that was eagerness to prove that they were ready, and how much was Sigma.

Maine’s unit was a simple one: an additional strength boost, applied on top of the existing force amps in the PFL armour. They were one of the only agents capable of wielding the unit without severe damage and with Sigma behind them, they tore down the concrete targets that were deployed against them with a _brutal_ kind of ease.

They were _invigorated_ by the time they were moved to the training chamber to be run through agility and weapons tests. Anyone watching could see it.

They passed their assessment with flying colours and were cleared to return to regular training, but not the field, just in time for the _Invention’s_ next slipspace jump. They’d be able to join the rest of the team in the rigorous schedule laid out ahead of them and they couldn’t wait.

“Good to have you back, big guy,” Connie said, reaching up to slap them on the shoulder.

“ _Thank you for your help, CT,_ ” Sigma said, projecting between them. “ _We would have been even rustier without you pushing us to bend the rules.”_

Maine batted him aside to sign a thank you of their own and Sigma just smiled.

“No need to thank me, Maine,” Connie said. Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn that she saw Sigma’s smile falter—only when she looked again, nothing had changed.

It was stupid. Unsafe, pointless, a million other things that Connie could hear Needles spitting off in the back of her mind. She’d only taken her first dive back into the system on the first night of the slipspace jump and it had been more like dipping in a pinkie-toe than anything—she’d found Florida’s file and, after pulling it, stripped away the encryption.

He was ONI. A Captain, even. It was more of a confirmation than a surprise, but it was sobering, nonetheless.

Not so sobering that she’d had the sense not to access the live feed from Texas’ private cryogenic chamber, though. No, she still made _that_ reckless choice.

She didn’t even know why. Retrieving the PC had been one of the most terrifying things she’d ever done, after the hour she’d spent clinging to the underside of the platform. Why she then felt like it was worth the risk to use the PC from her room not to do vital work, but to watch over Texas, she… couldn’t quite explain.

Texas was put into her pod in her armour—except for the helmet. Watching from the camera above her, she looked like she was sleeping, like any other person in cryosleep. Only Connie and Command knew that she wasn’t, that she was in a special kind of stasis, not cryo. Only they knew that she was there at all, put under so that she couldn’t interact with the others without the proper supervision.

Connie chewed her lip.

The feeling… was like she owed her something. Not that it made any more sense than any other reason, in fact it probably made less. What did she owe Texas? The truth? A way out? She didn’t even know if Texas would be on her side, if everything was aired out in the open. Connie didn’t know her. She didn’t know what kind of person Texas was, or what her values were.

She’d hazard that the Director didn’t truly know, either, but she had no evidence of that.

All she knew was that Texas was being lied to. And her gut told her that it meant that Texas was a victim, too.

CT sighed. Closing out of the feed, she leaned back against the wall and stared at the desktop. Mass’s photos cycled through on a loop. Connie knew the order by heart.

She twirled a strand of South’s hair around her finger.

She didn’t _like_ working in the room. It made it hard to separate the two halves of her life, made her head messier. CT and Connie tangled into a messy knot that she’d have to unravel if she wanted to get anything done. The observation deck had been her hideout of choice for a reason, but—

She had to keep working. Without any outgoing transmissions, she was at least safer. Florida had no way to track her non-networked computer activity and she could limit her incursions into the system to make sure he had as little opportunity as possible to trace what she _did_ do.

There would be no new information added during the jump. Command was asleep. Once they were out, however, she’d work to a strict schedule—check the system at certain intervals and stay out in-between.

For now, all she could do was work with what she already had.

_Let’s see where we might be going next_ , she thought to herself, lifting her hand from South’s head.

The form beside her shifted. South groaned, rolling over so her face pressed against the warmth of Connie’s thigh.

“What are you doing?” she mumbled, more than half asleep and wrapping her arms around Connie’s leg.

CT sighed. This was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to avoid.

“It’s just work,” Connie said, softly, combing her fingers back through South’s hair. “I’m just doing some work.”

South grumbled, peering over her leg and flinching away from the light of the screen. “Where’d you _get_ that?”

“I checked it out to work,” Connie lied, tilting the lid down before South’s sleep-addled brain could process what she could see on the screen. “Go on, go back to sleep, Natasha. I’ll be done soon.”

South hummed, leaning into Connie’s hand.

“Mm. Better be,” she said, eyes falling closed. “Workaholic.”

She was asleep again in seconds.

CT sighed and Connie put away the PC. There was time to plan her next steps another night.


	21. Keeping Up the Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/8176618ecf0a3412d63e244a4793b767/a1b093c818cfca89-be/s640x960/21b38addf5e5c4ee4de0efd37640473b2315f070.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro. Sorry that this wasn't uploaded yesterday as usually scheduled! Things came up.

Sand whipped around CT’s ankles like it was dancing in the breeze, almost imperceptibly scuffing the recently repainted surface of her armour.

She was two klicks out from the target. The Mongoose she’d been dropped with had been left another two klicks behind her, in favour of a quieter approach. Not that they didn’t know she was coming, but it was in everyone’s best interest if she kept up appearances. This had to look legitimate; any odd behaviour could attract Command’s attention and, at this point, catching their eye at all could be fatal.

The landscape ahead of her was all sand and dry scrub, stretched out between red rock plateaus. Two suns burned brightly overhead, heat beating down upon her that was only mediated by her armour’s in-built temperature regulation. Sand was getting everywhere and there was no telling how much the armour could withstand before delicate, precisely tuned systems like that started to suffer for it, so she moved as quickly as she could.

The base she was approaching was less of a base and more of a research site. Excavations were taking place at an alien structure, worn down by the battering of regular sandstorms and the brutal hands of time. Apparently, whoever Needles’ boss was had a vested interest in such a site. That was, no doubt, where the Project’s own curiosity had started.

There was another such site, tucked away in the desert climate of the Project’s primary simulation colony, but it wasn’t until the Director had set his sights on the ‘Insurrectionists’ that he’d begun to entertain an excavation.

Her objective was to gather intel and disrupt the ‘Insurrectionists’ operations. Neither objective would be completed.

She’d taken into account three main criteria in her choice of mission: one, the location had to be isolated; two, it had to be reconnaissance focused; three, it couldn’t be a full team assignment or a solo assignment.

The mission was perfect. The structure was about as isolated as you could get, surrounded on all sides by hostile territory and at constant risk of signal-disrupting conditions. It was primarily centred on information gathering. And, most importantly, it was neither team nor solo.

“ _What’s your ETA, CT?_ ” North said over the radio. He was back where she’d left the Mongoose, nested on the edge of one of the rock platforms. Her only teammate. “ _I have eyes on the structure. There’s definitely activity._ ”

“Twenty minutes, at my current pace,” CT said. “Give or take. How’s activity on the south side specifically?”

“ _Minimal. They seem to be congregated towards the north end. There’s an M313 Elephant and a small convoy of other vehicles. Not many soldiers, mostly science-types._ ”

“Roger that. Thanks North. CT out.”

CT kept moving.

The plan was simple enough. She’d approach the site, poke around and gather intel, then Sleeves would ‘stumble across’ her and she’d make the appropriate commotion over comms before knocking the connection out. After putting on a bit of a show for what limited thermal and tracker imagery North would have to go off, they would drag her into the back of a Warthog and move her to a nearby facility.

North wouldn’t be able to reach her in time and would be instructed not to act. Standard protocol for an agent being captured or trapped was to call in a Recovery team. That would buy them the time they needed.

Of course, there was always the chance that they decided she wasn’t worth saving, which would be a whole other problem to unravel, but it was a slim one. If only because her armour and unit were too valuable to let fall into enemy hands.

CT skidded down a rocky incline and crushed some dried-up bushes beneath her when she landed. Her HUD marked the site as a little over a klick away. If she looked ahead and squinted, forcing her HUD to zoom, she could see the unnatural shapes extending from the sand, distorted by distance and heat in the air.

Cover would get scarcer the closer she got.

She had very little new intel to bring them. Some data she’d recovered that had clearly once belonged to the ‘Insurrectionists’, going by its alien-centric nature; an updated list of all the fragments, already made or planned; updated versions of the Project’s maintained facilities; the current death toll… it was little things, but things they’d need. Things that supported the case against the Director or that they needed back.

The most important piece of intel wasn’t new, exactly, but it _was_ the source of a new plan of action that CT already knew Needles wouldn’t approve of. It was dangerous; it would extend her stay at the Project much further than Needles would like and whilst CT had no intention of leaving any time soon, she knew he hadn’t let go of that point of contention entirely.

Her stomach was dancing, doing an uncomfortable little Irish jig in her abdomen.

It would be the first time she’d seen them in person, instead of through a screen. The first _argument_ they’d have in person, instead of through a screen. Trying not to punch Needles might be half the battle.

(Perhaps that was unfair, but it wasn’t untrue.)

The natural landscape started to die out a few hundred metres from the structure, like the scrub and stone just melted into a plain of flat sand. CT ducked down behind the final rock ledge, the gentle rise and fall of low dunes the only thing between her and the structure. Cover was good until then and she was confident that she’d been undetected on her approach, but she could hear voices up ahead.

CT//: <what’s my window look like?>

ND//: <Most of the soldiers and science-types are still at the northern end of the structure. Estimate 250 metres, one end to another. Guards scattered around. Two at your 12.>

CT popped her head over the ridge just long enough to get a line on them and flag them on her HUD. Two grunts, easy to subdue.

CT//: <watch my back>

His status light flashed green in confirmation.

CT threw herself over the ridge and had the guards on the ground in seconds, cuffed together and stripped of their communicators. They’d be released easily enough once she was gone.

She pressed her back against the stone, waited a few seconds, then ducked around the thick wall and out of North’s sight. He’d only have unreliable thermals on her now.

The site was full of archaeological equipment and hefty military-grade PCs, hardened for the conditions. CT passed through areas that weren’t quite rooms, but weren’t quite open to the elements either, subduing or avoiding guards and archaeologists. She took photos, catalogued equipment, downloaded data. She did everything she was supposed to do.

Her cue came in the form of North’s voice over the radio, sharp with alarm. “ _CT, you’ve got someone on your 6. I can’t get a proper read with the heat, but—_ ”

CT spun on her heel and dodged a swinging fist aimed at her head.

Sleeves was a big guy. Not Maine, by any stretch of the imagination, but he stood easily a foot taller than she did and he, like every other tall person she’d ever fought, was very much aware of it and the advantages it could bring. What he was _not_ aware of were the advantages of being the opposite, so CT gave him a taste of them with the way she ducked around him and slammed her foot into his ribs.

No blades this time. She’d learned her lesson.

She could have taken him, if this had been a normal fight. Sleeves’ attacks were wide and broadcasted, like Maine’s—and if the similarity made a memory of a torn up, bloody throat flash in her head, then she suppressed it quickly. He struggled to even keep up with her speed until she toned it down after a well-placed fist to the side of her head, harder than it should have been but not enough to cause the disorientation she feigned.

“ _Shit—_ ” she cursed out over comms, stumbling backwards. When she went in for another swift kick, aimed at the unarmoured joint of his shoulder, she let herself be thrown off balance.

A large hand grabbed her wrist before she hit the ground and suddenly her legs were off the floor, muscular arms wrapped around her torso.

“Put me _down_ you big— _shit!_ ” she hissed, grabbing at his arms with all the convincing desperation that came with genuine surprise. Knowing what was coming didn’t make the adrenaline pump any slower, instincts driven deep into her nerves firing on all cylinders. She _kicked_ and she _screamed_ and she fought to find purchase on anything she could, but Sleeves had her secure.

He was as strong as he looked, lifting the suit with her in it.

One arm stayed wrapped around her waist whilst the other braced around her throat, the pressure just enough to set off another wave of adrenaline but not enough to choke.

North’s voice came into her ear, no less threaded with alarm than it had been before. “ _CT, what’s happening? I don’t have visual, CT, you’ve gotta let me—_ ”

“Position compromised, I repeat, position comp—” CT said, and then severed the connection mid-word. The adrenaline kept pumping, but it began to subside. She almost went limp in Sleeves’ arms, before thinking better of it. “I’d say you could put me down now, but he _does_ have some thermal imaging capability, so— drag me, I guess. Just in case.”

Sleeves huffed. Hoisting her up higher, he dragged her along to the convoy of vehicles at the far end of the structure, concealed behind the high walls of the main chamber. She kicked and struggled, just enough to look good from a distance. It took more effort _not_ to break free than it would have to actually do so.

He threw her unceremoniously into the back of a troop transport Warthog.

“Hey!” she protested, rubbing her side where she’d hit the seats. “You’re not _actually_ supposed to rough me up.”

Sleeves shrugged, pulling himself up into the bay. He wrenched her arms behind her back and cuffed them, her armour locking up from her wrists to her shoulders.

CT glared back at him. “Is that _really_ necessary?”

Sleeves gestured at the few hundred metres of clear territory the Warthog would have to cover before entering less open terrain. CT sighed.

North’s view would be terrible, but there was no need to take chances. Right.

“They come off the second we’re in the clear, got it?”

‘You don’t give me orders,’ he signed, hands flashing through the USL at a pace much faster than she was used to interpreting. ‘But yes, I know.’

“I… didn’t realise you spoke with sign,” she said, unable to stop herself thinking about those same hands wrapped around the pistol that had taken away Maine’s voice, too.

Sleeves shrugged. The Warthog started moving.

He removed her cuffs a few minutes later, once they’d reached the cover of the rocks and much taller sand-covered hills that extended for miles around. She rubbed her wrists and stretched her arms, fighting off any potential stiffness.

‘Sit down. The trip isn’t far.’

“I wasn’t exactly planning on standing,” CT said, settling into one of the seats that lined the edges of the bay.

Sleeves sat opposite her, glowering across at her through his helmet. CT refused to shrink back; she cocked her head at him until he looked away, then she turned and watched the landscape roll by instead. The pressure of his glare was gone.

She knew Needles’ team didn’t trust her, but she didn’t have to sit and take it.

They arrived at the facility ten minutes later. CT estimated that Recovery wouldn’t be ready to deploy for at least another twenty and they’d waste time investigating the excavation site first, to figure out where she’d been taken. Her window was still good.

Sleeves hopped out before they’d even come to a stop, apparently already over his ‘babysitting’ duties, as she’d caught him signing to one of the other generic soldiers on the way. CT shook her head and waited for the Warthog to stop before standing, jumping out of the back and almost right into the arms of an exuberant Rat.

“The tit-bitch arrives!” they cheered, all but dragging CT down to the floor with the sudden weight around her shoulders. “Whoa. You’re taller than I expected.”

“You’ve _seen_ me in person before, you know,” CT said. She was careful to avoid trapping the thick braid that still fell to their ass when she wrapped her arms around them in turn, squeezing tight. Rat 2 clambered from Rat’s shoulder to hers, squeaking in her ear.

“Not _properly._ Last time I saw you in person, your ass was knocked flat and I was pistol whipping like it was whack-a-dick at the county fair.”

The last mission before the spiral started. CT tried not to think about how long ago that had been.

“I remember.” CT playfully flicked up the end of their braid as she put them down. “You laid out a good trap that day. We fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”

“Of course you did, you Freelancers aren’t the _brightest_ spoons in the knife drawer,” Rat teased.

CT shook her head and laughed, shoving them.

“Connie!” said a familiar voice behind her. “You’re finally here.”

CT mouthed ‘help me’. Rat held up their hands and stepped back, but not before rescuing Rat 2.

Sighing quietly, CT pulled off her helmet, then turned around and gave Needles a mostly genuine smile. “Hello, Needles.”

He stepped up and hugged her. It was… awkward, to say the least, but no worse than being forced to hug a distant relative during a family reunion. Needles was wrapped up in a heavy sense of relief that CT could almost feel and could definitely see in his face when he pulled away.

His hand raised to touch her cheek, but luckily for both of them he thought better of it.

“You do look like him,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it.

CT pulled her dog-tags out from under her suit.

“I have everything I need to give you on here,” she said, waving them. They clinked together faintly. “We have time, but not forever. So…”

Needles coughed. “Right, of course. This way.”

He led the way to the facility’s communications hub. It was running on a skeleton crew, ready to be evacuated the moment CT was ready to leave or the Recovery team arrived, whichever came first. They had cleared her space at the central terminal and CT settled in front of it, putting her helmet down to the side.

“Oh, let me—” Rat said, pushing into the space between CT’s torso and the terminal. They typed in their access code and the system opened up in front of them. “There you go.”

“Thank you,” CT said. She took off her dog-tags and inserted the drive into the terminal. “Okay, there’s a few things. First, I’ve recovered a whole cache of data we appear to have stolen off you at some point related to alien matters. Excavations, artefacts, equipment… there’s quite a lot of it, I didn’t look through it all but…”

“That’s ours,” Needles confirmed with a nod. “Our boss will be glad to have that back. Whoever took it set us back quite a way.”

“Set you back in what, exactly?” CT asked, cocking her head. Needles opened his mouth and she rolled her eyes. “I know, I know, you can’t tell me.”

“Boss’s orders, sorry. You know better than anyone that you can never be too careful.”

“If you were being as careful as he’d like you to be, you wouldn’t be letting me use one of your central terminals,” CT said, nodding towards the screen. “I could find all sorts on here, if you left me alone.”

“Which is exactly why we aren’t doing that.”

“You don’t trust me? I’m hurt,” she said, mock hand on her chest. With a shake of her head, she looked back at the screen. “Anyway, that’s all yours. Then, I have an updated directory of most of Project Freelancer’s facilities; they’ve started directing a lot of things towards an off-site storage facility on their home base, of sorts. Backups, excess equipment, all sorts of things. Plus, there’s a structure not unlike the one you guys are excavating here so I figure that’s a point of interest.”

“It… certainly would be,” Needles said, brows knitted into a frown. CT ignored the expression.

“I’ve also updated our tally of Project-related deaths. We lost Georgia just the other week to a jetpack malfunction, for example. That’s all the ‘unimportant’,” she mimed the quotation marks with her fingers, “stuff. I figured I’d take advantage of the direct upload capacity to give you everything I hadn’t had the bandwidth to send you before.”

“Smart,” Rat said, poking CT in the ribs. CT flashed them a smile. “Take it that isn’t _all_ you have, huh?”

“Of course not. I’ve got an updated list of all of our enhancements, and of course the AI fragments they intend to make, including a projected timeline; if they want to create these AI, at some point they’re going to start speeding up production again. As of yet, I don’t know _when_ , but…”

She shrugged. Needles folded his arms.

“What I do have, I’m handing over,” she continued, clicking ‘upload’. “Like I said, next up is Trust. It looks like that AI will be going to North.”

Needles raised a brow. “You know where the AI are going this far in advance? You didn’t mention that when you mentioned Chi.”

“That’s…” CT sighed. “That’s another thing.”

“ _What’s_ another thing, Connie?” Needles said, voice taking on the edge of an argument that hadn’t even started.

“I was about to tell you when Florida walked in on me. Chi… Chi is supposed to be _mine_.”

The air changed.

Thick tension wrapped around CT and she swallowed, her lungs suddenly heavy with it. Needles’ eyes burned into the side of her head and she refused to turn to face them, fists balled against the terminal’s surface.

“ _What?_ ” he said, enunciating sharply.

CT pulled up the file.

“She’s supposed to be mine,” she said. “Not immediately, obviously; I’m too low on the board to receive an AI. They just decided that now was the best time to target empathy, which their psych profiles said would be best fitted with me.”

“What have they done with it?”

“Her,” Rat said. Needles stared at them. “ _Her,_ dickshit. Connie gendered the AI.”

“That’s not— look. I’m not starting that argument.” No, he was gearing up to start another, different one instead. “Where is it now?”

“Rat’s right, I called her ‘ _her’_ because that’s what she is. And _she’s_ in storage,” CT said, gesturing at the file. Needles folded his arms. “Waiting for the people ahead to me to get their AI first. I’m ninth on a board that hasn’t changed in months and as far as I can tell, it’s never going to change again.”

“So, you’ll never get the AI,” Needles said, a statement instead of a question.

CT finally looked at him. “I’ll have to _wait_ to get it. I don’t know how long, but—”

“No.”

“Sorry, Needles, did I phrase that as a question?” she said, cocking her head innocently. “If I can get hold of one of the fragments, that is _invaluable evidence._ The Director would have no leg to stand on when he was accused, because we’d have _physical proof_ , right there!”

“I said _no_ , Connie,” Needles said, like it was the final word.

“How many _times_ do we have to have this argument? You don’t get to just say ‘no’, you don’t get to just _tell_ me what to do,” CT said, turning to face him. “You’re not my brother and even if you _were_ , you’re not my _boss!_ You’re my _contact._ ”

Needles’ face flashed with something that almost made CT regret her words. A lost look, shining in widened eyes. It vanished almost as quickly as it appeared and his features hardened, his jaw taut and anger in his eyes, which in itself made CT back up a step. Her stomach burned.

Rat popped up between them, arms out.

“Needles _chill your dick_ before I have to strangle you with my braid or something, because I’m pretty sure she thinks you’re about to _hit her_ ,” they said, staring him down. “ _I_ know you won’t; you’re a dickhead who _really_ needs some therapy, _but_ you’re also a pussy. And if you start another stupid fight I _will_ get Sleeves to come sit on you, and Connie _will_ be perfectly in her right to point and laugh. Come _on_.”

Needles stared back at them for a long moment, then sighed. “I’m not going to hit anyone.”

“Good,” CT said, folding her arms. “I’d have you on your ass in seconds if you tried.”

“Look,” Needles sighed, dragging a hand down his face. “Staying that long… you said they’re making these AI every, what, three months? If you’re at ninth… what’s this North at?”

“Fifth,” CT said, shifting on her feet.

“So that’s three people ahead of you. Minimum, because I remember that one AI didn’t go to your squad at all,” he said. “Which means… maybe another _year_ , if we’re being generous. That’s _too long._ That’s longer than we’ve already been in contact.”

“Like I said, they’re going to start increasing production soon.”

“That’s not good enough. It’s too _dangerous_. How do you expect to hold out for another year when you almost got caught barely over a month ago? When we’re already running out of means for you to contact us?”

CT stepped up to him, craning her neck to look up and meet his eye. “What else am I supposed to _do_ , Needles? I’ve told you already, I’m _not_ leaving. Maybe it takes a year, maybe it takes more, maybe it takes _less…_ I’m not _going_ anywhere, so why does it matter?”

“You know why it matters. You _know_ what I think you should be doing. You just don’t want to hear it,” Needles countered, standing his ground. His jaw flexed.

CT crossed her arms over her chest and squared her stance.

“Y’know, this isn’t what I’d call ‘not starting another stupid fight,’” Rat said, rolling their eyes. They were already making a show of looking over their shoulder for Sleeves, over-exaggerated and dramatic. “Seriously?! Having one of those little AI bastards would be the _ideal_ outcome! Never mind that it’s fucking saving a sentient being from those asscracks, it’s _evidence,_ you absolute head-in-ass; no one could accuse her, us, of making things up if we had one of them! She’s _told_ you she’s not going to leave, why do you keep on—”

“Because Keaton refused to leave and he _died,_ Rat! You fucking know this!” Needles snapped, jerking his head towards them.

Silence settled over them, oppressive and heavy.

When no one said anything, Needles swallowed and took a step back.

“I told him, I _asked_ him, over and over, to _leave_. To come _with_ us. To stop being stubborn and realise that there were bigger battles to fight,” he said, not looking at anyone. “He wouldn’t listen. And because he wouldn’t listen, he _died_.”

CT figured she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Well… at least that’s finally in the open air,” she said, leaning back against the terminal. Taking a deep breath, she dragged her hands down her face and then folded her arms again. “Needles, let’s get one thing straight—I am not Keaton. I am _not_ my brother. That isn’t something I should have to be saying and god, you have no idea how much you’ve made me understand my girlfriend’s problems but— the point is… these situations are _not_ comparable.”

Needles shuffled on his feet. “Connie—”

CT held up a finger. “No, let me finish,” she said. Needles quieted. “Keaton stayed behind for… who knows what reason; our moms, his principles, something else… unless you were in his head, you can’t know, I can’t know. What I _do_ know is why _I’m_ doing this. I’m staying because by staying, I can get us all the evidence we need. I’m staying because it’s the right thing to do.”

“He’d have said the same,” Needles huffed.

“And he was _wrong_ ,” CT said, firmly. Her nails dug into her palm through the kevlar. “His priorities were skewed. I’m not him. I know we’re alike; I know we share the same core ideals… but we always clashed on one thing, and you know exactly what that is. I’m _not_ Keaton. I’m doing this because if I don’t, whole _worlds_ could die. One chance encounter with Covenant forces and— you know what could happen.”

He shuffled again. “I do.”

“If I do my job right, the Director will be punished for what he’s doing. But to ensure that, I have to get _everything_ I possibly can.” Her voice was even and calm, neither of which she felt. A deep, burning anger simmered in her chest and she understood what it felt like to be the kind of angry where you became almost numb. “I didn’t say I would _never_ leave. I told you that my _intention_ is to stay until I get Chi. But if it gets so dangerous that I can’t possibly stay…”

She swallowed. The simmering was smothered by pressure, crushing her from the inside.

“Then I’ll leave. But _only_ then.”

It felt like giving in, even though it wasn’t—a feeling not helped by the flash of victory in Needles’ eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, relief written into every line of his face. “That’s all I ask.”

“No, it isn’t,” Rat said, voicing the thought on the tip of CT’s tongue. “Also, dickhead: therapy. _Seriously._ ”

Needles ignored them. “Are… are the AI _safe?_ To use, I mean.”

“So far, I’ve been given no reason to think that they aren’t,” CT said with a shrug. “Maine gets headaches sometimes, but… I think that’s just a side effect of sharing your brain with a sentient computer. I wouldn’t have to have the AI in for long anyway, I could host her externally once I was home free.”

“Alright,” Needles said. “I don’t think we’ll get to that point, but… if we do, be careful. You can’t do anything with any of this intel if you’re dead.”

CT sighed, ignoring the way something indecipherable settled in her chest. “I’m always careful, Needles.”

Another heavy silence fell between them. Neither moved to break it.

A sharp grunt pulled their attention away from each other to Sleeves, stood behind Rat.

“What is it?” Needles asked.

‘Reports of radio activity and air traffic back towards the excavation site,’ he signed, pointedly avoiding looking at CT. ‘Should I get everyone ready to move?’

“Yeah, yeah you do that. Get everyone into the ‘hogs. We’ll be with you soon,” Needles said, waving him off. He turned to CT as Needles left. “Looks like we’re almost out of time. Anything else we need to talk about?”

_And who’s fault is that?_ she nearly said, but didn’t. Instead, she answered: “How I’m going to deliver you intel next time.”

“You said the captured story wouldn’t work more than once,” Rat said, shoving Needles out of the way to step up to the terminal, “right?”

“Right. I… don’t have a better cover story right now, but that’s not on you guys, that’s my job. I do, however, think I have a good location,” CT said, hip-checking Rat. “Everything downloaded to your main servers?”

“Yep. All sorted. Starting a local wipe now.”

CT nodded and turned her attention back to Needles. “I’m currently tracing your activities in the scrapyard. I can hold them off for a while, delay them… but we’ll be coming for you there eventually. Any chance there’s somewhere out of the way we could meet?”

Needles tapped his foot in thought. “There’s a couple of old ships. Scrap, but mostly intact. One of them, UNSC _Beyond the Horizon_ , still has working computers. Rat?”

“Yeah yeah, I got its tracker for her,” they said, at the same time as an alert popped up on CT’s secure comm. channel. “You let us know the same way as before?”

CT nodded. “I don’t know when, but I will. Now…”

She plucked her dog tags from the terminal and looped them back around her neck, tucking them into her suit. The metal was cool against her skin.

“You two better get moving. Recovery will be here soon, and I need to start looking like I broke out.”

Rat dragged her down into a hug.

“Not to sound like prick-face over here, but you better be careful,” they said, squeezing her so tight that she could have sworn her armour creaked. “I’m on Team Connie all the way but you _gotta_ stay alive, I can’t be on Team Connie if there’s no Connie, okay? Besides, I haven’t shown you all the stupid shit these assholes get up to yet.”

“I’ll be fine,” CT said, squeezing them in return.

Needles had the sense not to hug her a second time, choosing instead to offer her a hand. CT shook it, then pulled her helmet back on.

“I trust that I don’t need to say _again_ that I’ll be careful?” she asked, somewhere between light-hearted teasing and genuine annoyance.

Needles chuckled awkwardly. “No, no, you don’t need to say it again. See you at the scrapyard, Connie.”

He lingered a moment longer than he needed to, after Rat had already left to join the others, but then he was gone. CT was left alone, with a terminal now only connected to wiped local servers and the sound of vehicles in the distance, moving away.

She waited until she couldn’t hear them anymore, then she ran.

CT was maybe two klicks out from the facility when she stumbled into the arms of the Recovery crew.

“There she is!” North said, hopping out of a moving Warthog to reach her.

Alaska cursed, quickly veering so that he didn’t hit North and slamming the breaks. “What is she doing all the way out here—?”

CT stopped running, supporting her weight on a nearby rock. “I got free, Alaska. Their base is— is another two klicks that way,” she said, panting. She jerked her thumb behind her. “They’ll know I got out by now.”

“Easy there,” North said, crouching down half-way to look at her. “Michigan, you going to check her over?”

An agent in orange and blue armour that CT vaguely recognised from Gamma squad hopped out of a second Warthog, driven by California.

“Penny’s out on another mission,” Cali said, by way of explanation.

Ah. Combat medic. Right.

“Her BIOCOM looks fine,” Michigan said, though he still ran a quick physical exam. “No injuries?”

“No injuries,” she confirmed, “not besides the standard bruises and bumps from a fight. My arms are a bit sore from being locked in position but otherwise, I’m good.”

“Are you sure?” North said, in that way he did. CT groaned internally. Going from one patronising pseudo-brother to North was maybe something she should have taken into account when choosing this mission, in hindsight. “CT?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” she said, feeling like a broken record. “They just detained me. They didn’t even get to asking me anything. Too busy bickering about what to do with me.”

“Can you direct us to the facility?” Hawaii piped up from the gunner’s position of her sister’s ‘hog. “Director’s orders. We have to check it over.”

CT nodded. “I can show you.”

“What happened to your comms?” North asked her, as he helped her into the seat next to Alaska.

“Frequency jammer,” CT said. If they scanned her helmet, that was exactly what they’d find in its logs. “So be careful as we get closer. I only started getting access again when I got out this far. I was about to call Command when I found you.”

She directed them to the now-abandoned facility and sat in the Warthog as the Beta Squad agents checked it out, ultimately confirming that it had been completely evacuated and that there was nothing of use inside. Satisfied, they returned to their vehicles and started the drive back to the rendezvous.

“How did you get out?” Hawaii asked, with genuine curiosity.

“I used my unit. Turns out making someone think they’re seeing double or triple is a very good distraction,” CT said, shrugging. “I snuck out after that.”

Michigan seemed to cast her a look, but she did her best to ignore it, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back. That was her story and she was sticking to it. She’d even run her unit twice on the way out, just to make sure her armour corroborated her story.

The punishment for unit usage was much less severe than the punishment for being a traitor.

Arguing with Needles was easy in comparison to facing the reality that greeted her aboard the _Invention._

She rehearsed her story a thousand times in her head during the journey back: they caught her off guard and captured her, then after detaining her and wasting time trying to figure out what to do with her, she was able to distract the guards with her unit and overload the force-amps in her arms to break her bindings.

Her armour’s logs would back it up. Of course, it didn’t do much to explain why the ‘Insurrectionists’ had been able to move out so quickly, but she didn’t want to risk overexplaining herself. Command could draw their own conclusions from there.

CT said ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ and ‘won’t happen again, sir’ in all the right places, appeasing her way through the debriefing with practised, false deference.

The Director dismissed her with a firm glare that she felt in the pit of her spine even after she’d left the room. She hadn’t been caught out, but the ground beneath her feet felt unsteady, like it could collapse under her at any second.

Whatever limited favour she had left was built on cracking foundations.

Could it— _would_ it—really last a year?

She sat on the bench in the locker room, listening to the chatter of the Recovery team but not truly hearing it, staring into the golden eyes of her helmet. Reflected back at her, she saw the dark circles that hung heavy in soft skin.

CT covered the eyes with her hands.

“Mischief!”

Connie looked up just in time to have her face smushed into South’s shoulder, arms wrapping around her and pulling her close. Connie let the helmet fall to the floor and looped her arms up around South’s neck, inhaling. Still in armour, she smelled like sweat and metal.

“Saw the fuckin’ alert for a Recovery team go out, but I didn’t know it was _you_ until you were on your way back,” South said. Effortlessly, she scooped Connie up off the bench and sat them both down with Connie on her lap. “Fuckin’ F.I.L.S.S. locked me on the floor until I finished my fucking training, or I’d have come to the hangar.”

“I got whisked right to debriefing anyway,” Connie said, fingertips digging into the firm muscle of South’s shoulders and neck. She buried her face against the line of her jaw. “I’m okay. Nothing really happened, they just threw me in a room and bickered about what to do with me.”

South snorted. Her fingers ran through Connie’s hair. “You kick their asses?”

“Of course,” Connie said, leaning into the touch. She swallowed. “Hey, I’ve spent a lot of time running through a desert today, so… how about you get out of that gear and we go take a shower?”

South kissed the top of her head. Connie shrank against her.

“Don’t have to ask me twice, mischief.”

For just a second, the ground felt a little less unsteady.

It didn’t last long. 

She didn’t have a plan. Not for the scrapyard, not for staying alive long enough to receive the AI. She stared at Chi’s file that night, re-read the description of the torture that lead to her creation and looked at the picture of a small, pink hologram curled up into a ball over her containment unit. She stared at her and she wanted to take her, she wanted to pull this sentient bundle of code free from the place that had traumatised her and— she realised why she was chosen to receive her, one day.

Only she wouldn’t. A year was too long, she knew that. Deep down, she _knew_ that.

She tried to put it out of mind. She tried to go on with her day as if she was never going to leave, as if every word she’d said to Needles had been as sure as she had pretended it was. Only, trying not to think about it only made it push to the forefront of her mind and soon, the feeling that she was inches from falling through the floor was inescapable.

Movie night should have been enough of a distraction. Everyone had turned up, for once—even Carolina, who had avoided the evenings like the plague lately. York had distributed the terrible beer they had on hand this time and there was a bowl of popcorn that was being used as a weapon, more than a snack. They even had a new movie, something none of them had seen before.

It _should_ have been enough. It almost was, until Connie focused a little too hard on the sharp edges of people’s voices in supposedly playful arguments and those threads of tension that ran between everyone in the room, like a tangled cat’s cradle.

Her stomach twisted and CT tried to push the feeling down, but Connie couldn’t.

“Hey, South…?” she mumbled. The movie was only halfway through.

South looked down at her and brushed her hair from her face. “What’s up?”

“I… don’t feel great, I think I’m going to head back to the bunk,” Connie said, taking South’s hand and pressing a kiss to the palm. “Sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be fuckin’ sorry. You gonna be okay? You want me to come with?” South asked, brow crinkled with worry.

Connie almost said yes. CT shook her head and smiled. “No, stay here and enjoy the night off. I just need some quiet, time alone.”

“Yeah, course,” South said, and, though she looked no less worried, she let Connie go with a gentle kiss goodnight.

Connie swallowed a lump in her throat. South deserved better than all the lies.

CT punched in the code to the bunk and slammed her elbow against the close button, pain radiating up her arm. The lights turned on and she ordered them off again, plunging herself back into the darkness of the night cycle, the room reduced to shadowy outlines of furniture.

Connie exhaled and CT threw her band against the wall with a scream.

She wrung her wrist until the skin started to burn, until it would be red and raw under the light. The band was, mercifully, not damaged, so her software ensured there was no beeping, just a faint light cast where it sat on the floor.

CT kicked it under the bed.

Connie fell to the floor beside it and her head fell back against the mattress. She thought about reaching for her knives, imagined the cool surface beneath her fingers as she cleaned them, but she didn’t move. The floor was spinning beneath her feet and she only felt still when she closed her eyes, pressed her palms into the sockets until lights danced across the darkness.

Why did Needles have to be _right?_

A year was too long. A year was _too long,_ and she _knew it_. Chi was an unreachable goal. To get there, to stay _alive_ long enough to get there, she’d have to sacrifice more than she already had. Intel drops were unsustainable without safe external communications. Weeks already blurred into each other without the promise of a check-in, of a friendly face to talk to so that she wouldn’t be alone. 

It was only a matter of time before Florida found the tools that she’d used to make the false transmissions and then she’d have _nothing._ She’d be totally alone, with no way to call for help.

Her only choices would be to give up or to keep going and get caught.

She could give up. CT could give up, excise herself from the whole and pretend that none of this had ever happened. Sharper, firmer, more selfish—CT could give it all up and survive, let Connie be Connie again and live out her days without the risk of discovery hanging over her head.

Only Connie could never forgive herself if she did.

This was _real._ This wasn’t scammers in the marketplace or predatory UNSC officials or even _Lockson Industries_. Resol was _gone_. This was about the human race.

She couldn’t let it go.

Goddammit, she _couldn’t_ let it go.

CT pulled a pillow over her face and _screamed_. Why did he have to be _right?!_ Why did she have to be like— like—

Tearing up from the floor, she snatched the shrike up from the bedside table. The beak bit into her palm and blood trickled down the grooves in her skin and— and—

CT threw it against the wall and something cracked.

Connie choked on air.

“No no no no,” she mumbled, scrambling across the room.

The shrike had fallen onto the bed beneath it, its tail separated from the body. Feeling over the surface, she found no other cracks and though she struggled not to cry, she could at least be relieved by that.

Clutching the two pieces tight in her hand, the sharp edges pricking her skin, she slumped down into the bed and curled into a ball with her hands tucked against her chest.

That was how South found her a little over an hour later: curled up in the dark, clutching the broken figurine as close to her heart as she could and staring at the wall across the room from her.

South didn’t ask questions. South carefully unwrapped her hands from around the bird and cleaned the cuts, wrapped them in bandages and kissed them. South set the two pieces of the shrike on the bedside and promised she’d find glue in the morning. South helped Connie change into one of her t-shirts, much too large for Connie but oh so comfortable and saturated in the smell of South’s cologne, and then into bed.

“Grief’s a fucky thing, isn’t it?” South said, her eyes flicking over Connie’s shoulder to the figure.

Connie swallowed and buried her head in her chest, so she wouldn’t have to lie to her face. “It sure is.”

Though, she supposed, she _was_ grieving; just not the thing that South thought she was.

Hours later, when South was sound asleep at her back and the rhythmic sound of her breathing was the only thing keeping a sleepless Connie sane, she heard whistling.

Distant, but growing louder. Cheerful and unmistakable.

CT froze. She held her breath.

The whistling grew louder and louder, until she could hear footsteps beneath the tune. Slow and languid, crossing the length of the hallway. The whistling dulled slightly as he made his way to the end of the hall, only to spike again when he turned around to make his way back.

He stopped, just beyond her room. Quiet fell over the night as CT’s lungs _burned_ , her eyes scrunched shut.

_Walk away. Walk away. Please._

The whistling resumed and he turned the corner, the melody slowly fading out as he walked further and further away, until, finally, the world fell silent.

Then, and only then, CT let herself breathe.


	22. Countdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b73deb55350c299b352357411dc54932/dec0f3543ef00fe2-6c/s640x960/aac615e7260ce5c7b58f68bf6189dade45219100.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro.

Connie held back the tide as long as she could.

She dragged her feet in her investigation into the Scrapyard. Work that should have taken hours took a day; work that should have taken a day took three. She knew it was suspicious. If Connie had been who she was pretending to be, she’d have finished the work faster to make up for her ‘failure’ on the previous mission, but she wasn’t that person. Not anymore.

Even doing her worst work couldn’t delay the inevitable for long, however. Eventually, much sooner than she’d have liked, the UNSC Scrap Metal Recycling Station in the _Cuuria_ system was confirmed as a site of ‘Insurrectionist’ activity. The moment she reported it, a thousand little things were set in motion. Dominoes, toppling one by one towards an outcome that had been looming on the horizon for far longer than she’d allowed herself to see it.

Acceptance felt like a weight being lifted from her shoulders and dropped into her gut.

Connie didn’t want to leave, but CT knew that she would have to.

An invisible countdown had started to tick in the back of her mind, running on criteria she wasn’t yet privy to. Every silent tick added to the constant sense of pressure that motivated her every action going forwards. Whatever time she had left, she had to make the most of it. More than anything, she had to prepare. Not just for what lay ahead of her, but for what she’d leave behind.

It was Command’s lingering trust and stubborn reliance on her work in the Intelligence Centre that gave her the opening she needed to set up a failsafe.

The Intelligence Centre had always lacked security. The Project had held Connie and Mass beneath their thumb; they saw no reason to institute supervision, an objective viewer from the outside who would monitor and assist with their work. They had always been a two-person team. The cameras watched over them and Connie was hyperaware of the watching eyes that lay behind the lenses, but she also knew how to work around them.

So, when she inserted a drive into the terminal and injected a condition-locked overwrite virus into the system, to them it only looked like she was transferring new data into the logs.

Multiple all-but sleepless nights had given her the time she needed to build it. A simple virus, but one built so that it would lay dormant within the system until her band’s signal wasn’t registered in the ship’s logs for twenty-four hours. As long as she stayed aboard, as long as she stayed alive, the program would lay unused and undetectable.

However, if she left, it would become active. Twenty-four hours after she stepped foot off the _Invention_ for the final time—whenever that may be—it would begin to systematically delete the Project’s records on the so-called Insurrectionists.

They’d almost certainly stop it before it got everything, but it didn’t need to. It just needed to slow them down. Without her, any work they did to track down where she’d gone, or where the next best targets were, would take much longer. Long enough to buy them time.

Not a solution. Not a way to turn the tide and stay. A failsafe. A Hail Mary, to keep them off her tail.

Because they’d come for her, she knew they would. They’d never let her go, not with everything she had on them, not with her gear. Even if, by some miracle, she didn’t have to leave until she got Chi—and, by then, the thought was more of a pipedream than an aspiration—it would only paint a larger target on her back.

They would come for her. They would chase her down, wherever she fled to.

All she could do was make it that little bit harder to find her, and make sure she was prepared for when they did.

The ticking seemed louder, when she was down on the training floor.

The more CT practiced, the more the holograms felt like an extension of herself, like a phantom limb she could extend and manipulate at will. It wasn’t _all_ combat moves and deployments timed to the millisecond; it was projecting a hologram a few feet ahead of her and visualising the ways she wanted it to move, then watching it happen. Manipulating each limb; adjusting the way it held itself; and perfecting her mental map so that every motion she imagined translated perfectly.

Once she had that down, the combat parts were easier.

She threw herself into those night-time sessions. Hour after hour she spent on the floor, building up her tolerance, until four holograms in a row was an achievable feat without so much as a whiff of iron. Training bot after training bot was distracted then destroyed, before F.I.L.S.S. pulled them beneath the floor so that CT could try again, and again, and _again_ and—

Tick, tick, tick.

Four uses wasn’t _enough_. Not against the people the Project would send after her. Not against Carolina, or against Florida, or Wyoming, and certainly not against _Texas_. She had to do more, she had to do _better._

So, she pushed it to five.

One, launched forward over a bot’s head as she ducked to the side. Two, a holo-CT took a bullet as she ducked and then threw herself at the bot. Three, another bot got a lucky hit and her hologram moved to strike as she caught her breath. Four, a hologram darted between two bots and when they tried to hit it, they instead destroyed each other. Five, a hologram unfolded beside her to force the last bot to make a choice and—

CT stumbled, the phantom limb snapping back sharp against the back of her head. The hologram beside her flickered out and she heard the cacophony of her armour hitting the ground before the impact reached her. The bot raised its gun, aiming right at her head—

Her helmet slammed into its faceplate and it erupted in shower of sparks, almost looking confused in the second before F.I.L.S.S. shut it down. It crumpled into a heap and the helmet landed beside it, rocking on its rim until it settled, staring right back at her.

CT tore up from the floor, slammed her foot against the glorified bucket and sent it flying across the room with a frustrated shout.

Her knees gave way again.

Iron bit at her senses, sharp and unforgiving. It dribbled down from her nose and settled in the groove of her lips, tainting her tongue when she gasped for air. Dry heaving came next, not enough food in her stomach to vomit, but enough knots in it to provoke the nausea.

She let herself fall onto her back and wiped her face, shuddering at the sensation of blood smeared over her skin.

< _Would you like me to start another round, Agent Connecticut?_ >

Mustering the will to speak was a fight in itself.

“No, F.I.L.S.S. Log off.”

< _Do you need assist—_ >

“I said log _off_ , F.I.L.S.S.”

< _Logging off._ >

The primary lights turned off, leaving only the dull rows of LEDs designed to guide you off the floor in an emergency and the faint blue glow of the leaderboard. CT stared up at the dark ceiling, tears prickling behind her eyes, and her nose wrinkled; the blood was drying.

Why did it have to happen like this?

She left her family for this. She left behind her mothers and the shadow of her brother for _this,_ for false promises of transparency and good intentions that had died within mere months of her arrival because of one man’s grief. She had left behind _everything_ , her family, her home, her chance to hear their final words, for _this._ For— for—

For _what?_ For the war? For her own sake? Were her motives ever truly as righteous as she claimed? Had she come to Project Freelancer for noble reasons, or just to get herself out of a prison sentence? Had she been so naïve that she didn’t see the Counselor’s offer for what it was, or had she simply not cared?

How long had it taken her to realise the Triplets had been left for dead?

How selfish was she to seek out Mass’s help once she knew?

It hadn’t started this way. There was a time when her questions, her observations, were harmless; little critiques of a system she’d never truly believed in, but was willing to work with, to strive towards something that was larger than anyone’s personal feelings. Humanity’s survival was balanced on a knife’s edge.

How many times had she put the war above everything else, above not only her desires, but her own principles?

Would any of this have happened if the Director’s crimes began and ended with the murder of his agents?

Project Freelancer was meant to be a second chance for _so many people_. They had targeted those with charges hanging over their heads for a reason. How could somebody who owed you their freedom, their _life_ , ever speak out?

She thought of Washington, the man who’d knocked out a superior officer because he threatened the lives of his platoon, who now shot down even the slightest hint of dissent. She thought of the Triplets, whose crimes were so minor and yet, for them, to leave the Project would have been unthinkable, despite how it placed no value on their lives at all.

She thought of _Mass_ , whose actions had saved so many people and yet found zirself with nowhere to turn but a program that would eventually discard zir, _just in case_ ze reported their crimes.

Guilt bloomed in Connie’s chest and she scrunched her eyes closed so tightly that it hurt.

This was meant to be _her_ second chance, too. How had it all gone so _wrong?_

Even as she lay there, sick to her stomach with rage and guilt, she didn’t _want_ to leave. This place, these _people_ —they were a part of her life. Connie had many regrets, but the relationships she’d formed were not among them. These people were her _friends_ , they were the closest thing she had left to _family_ and yet—

And yet she’d spent months _lying_ to them, putting on a front. Not just with Carolina, but with York, North, Maine—with _Wash,_ her best friend and even with _South,_ her own _girlfriend._ Did anyone even know who she really was, anymore?

Did _she?_

Connie could feel the world beyond her growing distant and cold, retracting until it danced against the tips of her fingers.

CT knew what it meant and she rejected it, forcing herself to get up off the floor before the spiral could take hold and plunge her into a meltdown. She didn’t have the _time_ to crack apart at the seams like this. Not with the countdown looming over her as surely as the board that burned her eyes when she turned around.

She snatched her helmet off the ground and stormed out.

The hallway was as dark as the training floor. CT followed the LEDs that ran along the edges, eyes on the ground instead of the blackness ahead. There was no one about this late at night and she heard no footsteps, saw no silhouettes in the dark ahead of her. Which was why, when she turned a corner and collided with something solid, hard enough to rebound like she’d hit a brick wall, she was stunned enough to stumble over her own feet and start to topple backwards.

A hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed her arm.

Adrenaline kicked in and she kicked out, her foot slamming against the familiar resistance of armoured plating. The figure didn’t even flinch and, already half-way off her feet, all the attack did was knock CT further off balance. Only the hand wrapped tight around her elbow kept her from hitting the floor and, even then, it was a close thing.

“Whoa, there,” said Texas, not letting go. CT’s blood chilled. “I’m not attacking you. You’re the one who walked into _me_ here.”

“I can barely even _see_ you,” CT snapped back, wrenching her arm free. As her eyes adapted, the faint outline of an armoured figure became visible in front of her. No invisibility unit, tonight; just black against black. “Were you watching me?”

“What? No, I wasn’t watching you,” Texas said, as if it was so absurd. As if CT hadn’t caught her watching her before. “F.I.L.S.S., do me a favour and turn on the lights in Hallway 57b?” 

CT flinched and shielded her eyes as the hallway flooded with light. Texas didn’t have her helmet on, or her hair in a ponytail. Blonde locks fell flawlessly around her perfect face and CT felt a pang of something unknown—not quite pity, not quite unease—at the sight of her.

Texas’ brow crinkled. CT briefly marvelled that the Director had allowed even that ‘imperfection’. “Hey, are you okay?” When CT matched her expression, she continued. “You have blood smeared up your face.”

CT huffed, wiping her face in a futile attempt to clear it away. “I’m _fine_. I’m also not sure I believe that you weren’t watching me.”

“I _wasn’t_ watching you,” Texas said with a sigh. “Look, I know you saw me before and I know that must’ve looked weird, but I had my reasons. I didn’t even realise you were down here tonight; I was just looking for something.”

Omega, maybe?

CT sighed, biting her tongue. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“You did,” Texas said, shrugging. “I don’t really blame you, either.”

“Right,” CT said through her teeth. For a moment, she thought about using her unit to distract her so she could get past without any more awkward questions, but when the mere idea made her stomach turn, she thought better of it.

Instead, she stood there in the awkward silence and watched her.

There were all sorts of little things about Texas that were just to the right of normal, if you knew what to look for. A split-second delay in her responses to social stimuli. Her breathing, just a little too even to be natural, her shoulders rising and falling at perfect intervals. How she blinked every three seconds without fail. The fact that didn’t shift her weight on her feet unless you did it first and that she didn’t stop _staring_ , long past when it had become rude to do so.

Texas sighed—even that looked slightly wrong.

“Hey, look, CT—I don’t really know you, so maybe it’s none of my business, but are you _sure_ you shouldn’t get that looked at?” she said, gesturing at CT’s face.

Something wet dribbled over the swell of her lip and CT swiped it quickly, ignoring the fresh smear of blood on the kevlar that glistened in the light.

“I’m _fine,_ ” she repeated. “The doctor’s checked it out a while back. It’s nothing serious.”

“Alright, if you say so,” Texas said. “Your brain, not mine.”

Another beat of silence.

Texas quirked a brow. “I’m not keeping you here, you know. You can go.”

Right. _Right_. Taking in the scene in front of her, CT realised the hallway was more than wide enough for her to get past Texas without having to push her out of the way. So why was she waiting there, staring at her like a dumbfounded fool?

“I could say the same to you,” CT retorted, unnecessarily. Texas almost looked amused when she finally stepped past her and walked quickly down the hallway.

She’d barely made it two metres when Texas spoke again.

“Hey, CT?”

CT turned on her heel and cocked her head at her.

“…nevermind,” Texas said, shaking her head. Before CT could say anything else, Texas turned the corner and was out of sight.

CT didn’t waste any time in following her lead and making for the safety of her bunk.

The countdown sped up.

Trust was broken off that night, a month earlier than she had predicted.

She didn’t catch it immediately. Her time in the database was more limited now that the threat of discovery was around every corner. Almost a week had already passed when she found it: the AI Unit Designated Theta, the Alpha’s trust personified into a childlike personality who the Counselor assessed as requiring a ‘nurturing’ agent to thrive.

Assigning him to North made sense, she supposed. If you wanted to give the kid complexes.

Four more AI were listed with target dates spread two months apart. The increase in production had started, but none of those AI were to be assigned to Alpha Squad. Alaska, Columbia, Nebraska, Nevada—approximately eight months of AI, but not a single space between North and CT filled.

Any hope of staying long enough to get Chi died with that knowledge.

She did what she came into the database to do, even as her heart beat faster and her hands began to shake. They were due to enter slipspace within the next few days, destination: _Cuuria._ CT had to get everything new transferred to her dog tags before the isolation of slipspace made any incursion into the system even riskier than it already was.

She had to be ready for the scrapyard drop. She had to let Needles know she was coming. She had to prepare to— prepare to—

There were a lot of things to do. She couldn’t waste any time.

Not when she had so little left.

Even in slipspace, an environment that was by its nature liminal and outside of the usual laws of time, the countdown ticked on. Tick, tick, tick—constant, through every waking moment of the false days prescribed by artificial sunlight and darkness alike. The jump wasn’t long; a week, give or take a few hours. It would be over before she knew it and she was more aware of that fact than ever before.

Suddenly, the countdown wasn’t so amorphic.

Every minute that passed brought her a minute closer to the inevitable and yet to everyone else, nothing had changed. Her days flew by in a blur of training regimens. To the other agents, training was just training—annoying, tiring, repetitive, but nothing new; to _her_ , it was hours of time wasted on watching her teammates practice the very skills they would later use to hunt her down, if she left.

( _If_. Still _if_. Who was she kidding? When. _When._ )

Her days didn’t belong to her. Even asleep in his cryotube, the Director had a say in her life. The daytime hours were strictly regimented and even their lunch breaks had a bitter edge to them, the conversations all surface-level and insignificant. The conversations had by people who didn’t know that the whole world was about to change, whose feet were planted firmly on a rug that they didn’t know was about to be ripped out from under them.

Not that the laughter wasn’t real. She enjoyed the usual stupid jokes, the usual stupid topics, the usual stupid people. She teased Wash and then defended him from York in the same breath. She stole food from South’s tray and slapped Wash’s hand when he tried to steal from hers, only to pinch a fry from him seconds later. She stared in awe at the sheer amounts of food that Carolina and Maine ate, and cheered when South tried to coax them into an eating contest.

On the surface, she was herself. Yet still her days felt distant, like everything around her was beyond her reach and out of her control.

Her nights, however, were her own. She _claimed_ them, she clung to them with desperate hands that shook as she buried claws into the hours of time that encompassed everything she had left in the world that she still had some semblance of control over. Every second of those nights could be dragged out into hours, if she pretended hard enough. If she held _tight_ enough.

South seemed grateful for the attention. Hours were dedicated just to her, to making the most of the time they had left with each other. Not that South knew it. Not that South realised that every second they spent together brought them closer to the end of something good.

To think that Connie had been so scared of what could go wrong if they took the leap that landed them there, together. Scared of death and the spectre of war, she had never thought for a _second_ that it would be _this_ that tore them apart. The seeds had begun to bloom, with the disappearance of the Triplets, but she had still been in denial, back then, about so many things. She had still held hope that the Project was what it claimed to be and not what it really was.

They weren’t supposed to end like this.

“Do you remember what you said to me, first time we met?” Connie mumbled, dropping her head back against South’s shoulder. Tucked into South’s lap, she felt secure and protected in a way she never wanted to let go of.

“Course I fuckin’ remember, mischievous face,” South said, poking her cheek. Connie giggled. “Like I said then, I never forget a mischievous face; had my eye on you from the first time I saw you. Can’t believe you didn’t think I was into you until we fucked.”

“In my defence,” Connie said, holding up a finger. “Actually, I don’t have an end to that sentence.”

“You’re fuckin’ adorable.” South snorted. She kissed the top of Connie’s head. “You have a point with that question, or just feeling fuckin’ nostalgic?”

“Nostalgic,” Connie said. Sighing, she let her data-pad rest against her legs and wrapped her arms back around South’s neck. She’d spent the last hour re-reading the same paragraph of her book, anyway. “Things used to be so much simpler.”

They had spent the previous night watching an old Earth movie, from when people still thought that aliens and space travel were restricted to the realms of science fiction. The night before that, they had tucked themselves away in a forgotten corner of the hangar and been truly alone, for a little while. Another night, they had gone down to the observation deck with Wash and Maine; it was the first time she’d set foot there since Florida and she had relaxed, for a little while, against all odds. And still, she’d been unable to truly enjoy any of it.

“You remember that time we got stuck on a shithole planet for three days because the Innies knocked out our radios?” South asked, fingertips drawing patterns on the exposed skin of Connie’s stomach.

“You think almost every planet we’ve set foot on is a shithole, but yes, I remember.”

“York tried to get us all to tell fuckin’ campfire stories. Stupid assfuck.” South chuckled. The pad of her trigger finger was worn and calloused against Connie’s skin. “Ragging on him never gets fuckin’ old.”

“Like the time we switched out York’s hair product for bright green dye?”

South laughed. “ _Exactly_ like that. Limp _and_ obnoxiously green hair. That was fucking glorious. I’m so fucking lucky I’ve given you no reason to use my locker code for evil. How many people’s codes do you _know?_ ”

“Every single code in the locker room.”

“Even the bitch in black’s?”

“Even that one.”

“You’re terrifying,” South said, and poked her in the belly button. Connie’s stomach retracted and she giggled, bumping South’s jaw with her nose. “And I love it.”

“I know you do,” Connie hummed quietly. She sighed, closing her eyes.

“Hey,” South said, after a moment of silence. “You’d let me know if there was something wrong, right? You’re okay?”

Connie sighed softly. “South…”

South asked her what was wrong a thousand times in those few nights, and Connie almost told her a thousand times, but the words always hung on the tip of her tongue, like someone who’d fallen and grabbed the edge of a cliff at the last second before they could hit the ground.

She deflected the question as often as she could and promised her that she was fine the rest of the time, despite the tiny part of her screaming that if she just _told South_ then she wouldn’t have to give everything up.

CT knew better than that part of her.

The final night of their journey arrived before she was ready, so she refused to acknowledge it. She muffled the incessant ticking of the countdown under the pressure of lips against lips, of firm hands on hips and travelling up under her shirt. South’s hands were warm and those battle worn fingers skimmed over delicate skin with comforting familiarity and Connie memorised every little touch, every sensation.

Her own hands shook a little as she fumbled with South’s shirt, pulling it up over her head and tossing it aside. Fingertips danced down South’s spine, along the path of the drop pod tattoo that decorated her skin until they reached it, the spot where she knew the black ink settled.

And she faltered, just for a second.

South noticed, because she always noticed. She pulled away from their kiss to cup Connie’s cheek.

“What’s _wrong,_ Connie?” she asked, her thumb arcing over Connie’s cheekbone.

Again, the words caught on the tip of her tongue before they could meet the air, clinging more desperately than ever to the ledge.

Connie grinned, instead, tugging at South’s underwear. “What’s _wrong_ is that you’re still dressed.”

South laughed that wonderful laugh and pulled the material down, tossing it aside. Connie braced her hands against the firm muscle of her abdomen and leaned back in, kissing her deeply.

South kissed back, but when she withdrew for breath, she asked: “Seriously, mischief, are you good?”

“I’m good,” Connie half-lied with a smile. She needed this. She needed these moments. “I’m just thinking about the mission coming up.”

“I’ve got my hand up your shirt and you’re thinking about work?” South teased, as said hand cupped her chest and her other began trailing a path down between her legs. “Clearly, I’ve got to up my game.”

She kissed her and Connie giggled against her lips, melting into the contact. She _needed_ this.

Everything else could wait.

Afterwards, when South was laid with her head on Connie’s stomach and Connie’s fingers were combing through her hair, when they were both sweaty and satisfied, Connie could no longer avoid the thoughts she’d tried so hard to suppress.

South was… what was South?

Loud, brash and unashamed, in everything she did—in her laughter, in her attitude, in her body language, in her words—she was who she was and _fuck_ you if you had a problem with that. South was all-consuming laughter. South was biting words and hard-hitting punches. South was creative curses and targeted jabs that never really hurt until she wanted them to. South was vibrant, inked skin and dyed hair and scars and bloody noses and a smirk on her lips.

South was falling without a safety net but knowing you’d be fine, because you’d fallen further before and lived.

South was unpredictability in a form that somehow felt _safe_.

And Connie loved it. Loved _her_. Fuck, Connie _loved her._

But she couldn’t _trust_ her. Not on this.

Because South was also selfish. To say so was not a condemnation, it was a fact; South put herself and the people she cared about above everything else. South would set the world around her alight if it meant keeping herself and those people warm and Connie knew that not just because she had seen it in the way South cared with such ferocity, but because she had seen her file.

Agents North and South Dakota—Staff Sergeant Nikolai Katin and Sergeant Natasha Katina—were the sole survivors from a bad drop with their ODST squad. They arrived at the rendezvous with North slung over South’s shoulders, injured and tired, with a story that was just a little bit too neat. Rehearsed. No one that interrogated them could find a hole in the story, but the UNSC had prepared to bring charges regardless. Only the Project’s intervention halted the investigation.

Connie had known since the day after they met. She had never judged her for it, she had never held it against her; whatever had happened during that drop, it happened because, to survive, the twins had no choice. They put each other first.

So it wasn’t that Connie believed that, should she tell South, she’d turn on her. She was one of the people that South would set the world ablaze for, she had no doubts about that.

And _that_ was why she couldn’t trust her with this.

Not because she didn’t care about Connie, but because she wouldn’t care about _this._ If she told South, then South would try to convince her not to do it. To stay, to let it all go and stay with her. South would push and pull at what little resolve Connie had to follow through because South wouldn’t _care_ about the bigger picture, she never _had_. Her rage against the Project had always been targeted; it had been about the way the Project had treated her and the people she loved.

Everything else, she had dismissed.

So, no. Connie couldn’t tell South. No matter how much she loved her. Telling her would only hurt them both more in the long run. It would only ruin their last few hours.

“You’re thinking again,” South mumbled, her lips tickling Connie’s stomach. “Don’t. Relax, mischief.”

With her eyes closed, South couldn’t see the way Connie scrunched her eyes shut to hold back tears as she said, “I’m just thinking about you, Natasha.”

There was a long beat of silence. For once, the question went unspoken and unanswered.

Connie wasn’t okay. Connie hadn’t been okay in a long time. They both knew it.

“Come here,” Connie said, beckoning her. South followed her call without question, her hands braced on either side of Connie’s head and their faces mere inches apart. When Connie cupped her cheeks and brought her down to kiss her, she kissed back so gently that it only made it harder not to cry.

They’d never really said it, but she knew South loved her too.

She’d never hear it, now, but she could feel it. One more time.

Connie couldn’t sleep.

She tried. For hours, she tried to let the warm presence of South curled around her back lull her to sleep. For _hours_ she lay awake, staring at the broken shrike on her bedside or the darkness of the inside of her eyelids.

By the time she’d accepted that sleep wasn’t coming, it was almost three in the morning.

She slipped out of bed as carefully as she could and left South comfortably asleep, tucked under their blankets. Her hair fell messily over her face and Connie just stared at her, for a while, cataloguing every detail of the woman she could have had a future with, until she finally tore herself away.

She wasn’t quite sure why she ended up on the observation deck. It had scared her long before Florida almost caught her. Even in all the nights she spent there, she had never quite felt safe without Wash, Maine or South at her side. The eerie silence of space made her lungs feel compressed and her mind run in circles about the ‘ _what if’s_ of the void in front of her—unpredictable and infinite and absolutely _terrifying_.

Though perhaps less terrifying than the decisions she had ahead of her.

There was no more work to do that night. She had done everything she could do. Except…

He should have been asleep, but she knew him well enough to check and find his status light green in their private comm. channel. Agent Washington, David Chae, wide awake just like her, re-reading a field manual to try and lull himself to sleep.

CT//: <can’t sleep? I’m on the observation deck if you want some company>

Her breath caught in her throat when the three little dots started to bounce only to stop, a second later.

WA//: <sure, omw>

She exhaled.

When he arrived, he sat beside her without a word. The silence that stretched between them was as thick with tension as it ever was and Connie didn’t know what to say, now that he was there.

He broke the silence for her. “Are you okay, CT?”

“I’m okay,” she lied, turning to give him a smile. “I just… wanted some company.”

“You sure? Because you kind of look like shit,” he said, then held his hands up with wide eyes as Connie gaped at him. “No offence! I just meant that— uh— y’know, you look tired. Not that you look… bad, or anything, or—”

Connie _laughed_. Despite it all, she _laughed_.

“You’re hopeless,” she said, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow. Shuffling closer, she leaned her weight against his side and let her head fall onto his shoulder. Wash froze, but then he looped his arm around her shoulders. “I know I look like shit, it’s 0300. You don’t look like a spring chicken yourself.”

“Point taken,” he said as his head fell against hers.

The silence that followed was less tense, more natural. Words that neither of them knew how to say hung in the air and they let them rearrange themselves, for a while, until they knew which ones were worth disturbing.

“Talked to internals, lately?” Connie asked, a thousand of those unspoken words trailing behind her.

“What? Oh, uh, no. They called me back a couple times, but… once they realised I wasn't going to give them—” Wash coughed, “—that I didn't _have_ the information they wanted, they cut me loose. Haven’t talked to them in months.”

He really had always known. If that hadn’t been clear before, it was then. He knew, he just wasn’t prepared to take the risk and trust her. In turn, she’d never been able to truly trust him.

“I’m… sorry, for shutting you out for so long,” Connie said, wrapping her arm around his waist. “It’s my fault. I’ve been so wrapped up in my work that I’ve neglected our friendship and I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s okay. I haven’t exactly been the best about it either,” he said. “I haven’t been the best about a lot of things.”

He was right about that.

“I’ll try to be better about it,” he said, and she believed him. She believed that he would try, but she knew that it would make no difference. Even had she found a way to stay, the wedge between them had been driven in by hit after hit. It was too embedded to loosen and no matter how hard either of them tried on the surface, no matter how many times they laughed and joked and tried to be what they were before, it would never be the same. “We’re busy, but… you’re still my friend.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. She was tired of telling lies.

“You know, before I met you,” she said, “I thought you were going to be this… hard-ass, dead serious soldier-type who wouldn’t know what a smile was if it punched him in the face.”

Wash blinked at her. “You— _really?_ ”

“Your file painted a very… _narrow_ , picture of you!” (“Ahh, the _files._ ”) “It didn’t show me things like the skateboard or the cat photos or the guy who would steal from the mess hall to make sure his friend got their favourite breakfast bar. It showed a guy who… well, you know what it showed.”

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing. “Yeah, I do. Wow. How quickly did I destroy that impression? How long did I get to be a badass?”

“About five minutes,” Connie teased. “Your skateboard fell out of your locker and then I knew. I _knew_ we’d be friends.”

Wash smiled and Connie memorised it. The little dimple in the corner of his lips, the light in his eyes.

He’d never been a bad guy. He was just… scared. Scared to lose his second chance.

“I uh—” Wash rummaged in his pocket. “I brought some _Droplets_. I know it’s late and we’ll probably end up sending half of them off the edge if we play, but…”

He pulled the packet out and Connie stared at him, wide eyed, until all she could do was grin.

“I bet I’ll catch more than you,” she said, fighting back tears.

If Wash saw, he didn’t say a thing. “Oh, you’re on.”

They played until the bag was empty, until they were both so tired that their aim was either sending the acidic sweets rolling right off the deck or into each other’s eyes. They lost track of the score and they burned their tongues and they _laughed_ , until it was so late that they had to stop.

It was bittersweet in more ways than one.

“I hope you manage to get some sleep, Connie,” Wash said, and Connie didn’t correct him. She’d rather he remembered her as Connie than CT, in the end. CT was the one who had pushed him away. “This… this was nice.”

“It was,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it. “Go on, go sleep. I… I’ll be heading back soon, I just…”

“Need to clear your head,” Wash finished for her with a nod. “I know.”

He did. He knew.

He left and she didn’t say goodbye, even though that was what it was. To say it would make it real and she wasn’t ready for that, not yet. Sat there in silence, in the space in-between, she could almost fool herself into thinking she had more time.

But like all things good, Project Freelancer couldn’t even let her have that.

Her band beeped. A single, sharp note that made her flinch and want to tear it off, to throw it over the edge.

The only thing that stopped her was the sight of the mission clock, spread across the bottom of the leaderboard.

<35:59:49>

The countdown wasn’t invisible anymore. The seconds ticked in time with the clock on the screen, on her band.

Thirty-six hours. Thirty-six hours until they moved on the scrapyard.

Thirty-six hours until everything changed.

There was nothing else she could do. Once she left, the narrative was out of her hands. She would be a traitor, a mole, a liar—the people she knew and loved would be forced to see her as an adversary and there was _nothing_ that she could do to change that. She couldn’t tell South. Washington already knew, he just refused to see it.

Even leaving a message behind was too dangerous; it would implicate them, and she couldn’t do that, she couldn’t get in the last word at the expense of their lives. Better for them to think badly of her than to know the truth and die for it. She would leave the _Invention_ with her secrets intact because to do anything else would be against everything she had already done.

So why did it feel so wrong?

She was half-way back to her room when it hit her.

The illusion of a silhouette in the darkness. A shadow amongst shadows. Another paranoid tic she might never get rid of, but one that sparked a memory, a realisation.

There was one person on this ship that deserved to know the truth, above all else. _One_ person that she could trust to do what needed to be done, if push came to shove.

Maybe she was crazy. She certainly felt it, as she hunkered down between Texas’s locker and her own, with the camera feeds looped, and stared into her helmet.

“Agent Texas.” No, wrong. “ _Allison_. If you’re reading this, then that means I escaped. Or, well, at the very least, I’m probably not around anymore.”

Her trust in Texas was inexplicable and undefined. There was no tangible reason to trust her. There had always been just as much evidence that she was under the Director’s thumb as there was to believe that she was a victim above all else. Connie couldn’t know where her loyalties truly lay but she knew one thing: Texas was being lied to.

If nothing else, she deserved to know the truth about who and _what_ she was. The Director would never tell her. The UNSC would only capture her, study her, and destroy her. Maybe, if CT told her herself, if she left what she had behind for Texas to find…

Maybe…

Maybe she really was crazy, but, as the clock ticked down, she found she didn’t care.

It took a few takes. The words flowed with an unexpected ease, but her voice was unsteady and her tone was off and her heart pounded so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t even hear herself speak half the time.

“I wanted to leave behind all the data I've been collecting about Project Freelancer. I never could shake the feeling that something was wrong with the program. The secrets, the _lies_ , the manipulation. _Smoke_. All of it. Obscuring a _big damn fire._ ”

Everything she had wanted to say for months finally met the open air, but there was no one around to hear it. Only a camera and the hope that sometime, someday, the message she was recording would be found.

“I did some digging and now I know what the Director has been hiding. What he did. He broke the law, Allison.”

The name felt delicate on her tongue. Like a promise she was making to a woman she’d never known.

“And not just any law, the _Cole Protocol_ ; the _one_ law they don't just slap you on the wrist for. This is bigger than any of us, Allison, the things he’s done could have meant the end of everything. I'm taking the originals with me as an insurance policy. I leave this copy for you not because you are the best soldier in the squad, but because I know that I can trust you the most.”

Her mouth felt dry and she knew as she spoke that she was admitting something that she would not accept for days, weeks, perhaps _months_ , to come.

“After reading these files you will understand why. Good luck,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Your friend, Connie.”

Those final words were heavy, laden with unrealised possibilities and things left unsaid. She would never know if reaching out to Texas before would have changed anything. It was easy to regret potential and forget that, at the time, the risks had outweighed the benefits. Maybe telling Texas would have changed everything for the better. Maybe Texas would have turned her in. Or maybe, even if Connie _had_ tried and Texas had listened, her memory banks would have given them away.

She would never know, but she let herself hope, just for a moment, that it would have made things better. Not because it could change anything that had already happened, but because if she believed that, then maybe, just _maybe_ , that message would change the things to come.

Connie took a deep breath and hit stop.

Sat on the floor with Mass’s PC, she created a new drive of data and uploaded the message to her dog tags. She edited the Beta file to re-lock it under the simple passcode of ‘Allison’ and added that, too. The dog tags were safer. They wouldn’t be detected as unusual by any scans and they’d _mean_ more, she hoped, than an impersonal drive.

Texas’ locker code was the equivalent of Allison too.

The tags dangled from Connie’s hand, the bottom edge scraping faintly against the metal shelf. Texas never used her locker. It wasn’t a sure thing, but it was _something._ It was a chance. It was potential.

It was the only thing Connie could do.

She dropped the tags and closed the locker.

Everything else was tying up loose ends.

Mass’s PC was wiped of all incriminating data and placed inside Virginia’s locker, where maybe she would find it and return it to someone who knew zir better than Connie did. She liked to imagine that it may make it back to zir family, one day. That would be nice.

She returned an unfinished puzzle cube she’d borrowed from York, once upon a time. Some fist-wraps and a lip-gloss she’d been lent by Carolina. A credit chip for the value of a debt she owed Illinois from a long-forgotten poker game. An old water bottle that North had given her after he accidentally cracked hers. A comb that one of the Beta Twins—which one, she wasn’t sure—had let her use, then forgotten about.

Maine’s sweatshirt, that they’d let her borrow one day when she forgot to bring fresh clothes for after her shower; it was so comfortable she’d taken to huddling up in it when she was sat waiting for someone. They’d never asked for it back.

She sat in it as she sorted through her knives, deciding which ones to take and which to leave. Only three fit on her armour, one on each hip and one on her chest plate, so she picked her favourites, her old faithfuls, and left the rest in Wash’s locker. He’d treat them well and use them properly.

She packed her ammo compartment for the mission with what little she could carry. Her data-pad, the drive, the photo disc—now loaded with new photos, new memories. Her shrike was too round to fit, so she could only take the tail, and she’d be lying if she said that it didn’t feel like losing her brother all over again.

The sharp edge of its broken tail feathers dug into her hand as she held it close to her chest. When, finally, she mustered the will to let it go, she tucked it into a nest of towels in South’s locker and told herself that at least there, it would be safe. For now.

It was almost 0600 by the time she was done. Curled up into a ball inside Maine’s sweatshirt, she stared at the mission clock as it counted down, second, by second, by second.

Everyone would be waking up soon. Not just Alpha Squad, but those in cryo. The _Mother of Invention_ would come alive and drop out of slipspace, ready for their assault on the scrapyard. Her final thirty-four hours aboard would be filled with preparations and briefings.

She didn’t want to get up.

But she did. She slipped out of Maine’s sweatshirt and put it back inside their locker. She dragged herself through the halls and back to her bunk, clambered back into bed with South for what would be the second-to-last time. She buried her face in South’s chest and she feigned sleep so she wouldn’t have to lie.

The transition into real-space went by in a sleep-deprived blur and before she knew it, she was standing on the bridge as the Director glowered at them all from the other side of the table and Carolina explained the mission that Connie already knew inside out.

Like it had been so many times before, their objective was to capture the leader of the ‘Insurrection’. York would attempt to gain access to his personal hangar, opening it up for the team to enter and _when_ , not if, he failed, they would be re-routed. Entry would have to be forced through alternative means and whilst her friends, her team, threw themselves into a mission that was set to fail from the start, Connie would make her way to the UNSC _Beyond the Horizon_.

She was uncharacteristically quiet during the briefing. No snarky comments, no questions. There was nothing to say. Not on the bridge and not in the Pelican, where she sat silently with an experimental jetpack in her hands, staring at the floor.

The countdown didn’t stop when the mission clock ended. No, it had only grown louder when she stepped aboard the Pelican, echoing around her skull—tick, tick, tick, _tick, tick…_

The ride was rough. The bird never stopped shaking. Connie watched the others talk and bicker but didn’t really hear them. South helped her attach her jetpack and sat beside her but even as she spoke to her, checked on her for the millionth time, Connie could barely comprehend the words.

“Just trying to prepare myself,” she said, not lying this time. Her final words to South wouldn’t be a lie.

And South joked, she tried to reassure her with words that meant nothing and everything all at once. And Connie tried to pretend that it worked, that she would be okay.

But when they stood up, when the rear door opened and they were standing in formation, ready to go, South looked at her again. Even in the impersonal gold sheen of her visor, Connie could see the question that she couldn’t answer.

South knew that something was wrong and all Connie could do was take her hand, one last time, and _squeeze_ with all the strength she could muster.

And then they were thrown into open space and Connie didn’t follow her.

And then Connie’s heart was pounding and she was trying to hard not to think about the crushing pressure all around her and the possibility of being thrown into the unknown and—

And then Connie was atop the _Horizon_.

And then the countdown ended.

Connie took a deep breath.

CT hopped inside.


	23. Free Bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/88791540450e8b391e6271d61f0669d7/189c064d36f369ee-48/s640x960/9461d62c62933a1458bab481f7fcbcdd86c947e7.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro. Sorry that this is two days late, one day I was busy and then I genuinely just forgot because it wasn't Sunday anymore. Oops!

“You dropped a _nuke_ on my _teammates?!_ ”

“They’re not your teammates anymore, Connie.”

CT let out a startled, disbelieving laugh. “They’re not my— _really?!_ Really, Needles?! That’s the argument you’re going with here?! Are you _kidding_ me?!”

The _Staff of Charon_ was eerily silent as it carved a path through slipstream space. CT could count on two hands the people she had seen as they ferried her from the hangar bay to the bridge—and Rat and Needles were two of them. The bridge itself was occupied by only her, Needles, Rat, and a couple of soldiers who were quickly backing away from the brewing argument.

Needles sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he said.

“ _Do_ I? You, and I _cannot_ emphasise this enough, _dropped a freaking nuke_ on my _friends._ Those people are my _friends!_ ” CT snapped back and slammed her fists against his chest.

The soldiers stepped forward and raised their guns, but Needles held up a hand and shook his head. They stood down.

“If I’d meant to kill them outright, I would have dropped it right on top of them, but I _didn’t._ I had to make sure they wouldn’t try to follow us. Think of the nuke as—” He sucked in his lips. “Crowd control.”

“ _Crowd control?!_ ”

“Hey. Hey Needles. You ever notice that you’re a _massive dick?_ Or how _every time_ you open your mouth, you make things worse? Stop deep-throating your own goddamn foot,” Rat said, deadpan, looking up from where they were perched on top of a control terminal, head in their hands. “You guys are giving me a headache. Actually _no_ , just you, Needles. You’ve done nothing wrong, Connie. Ever. In your life.”

Needles folded his arms. “Poor choice of words or not, I’m right. The nuke forced them to scramble and made sure they didn’t have the chance to try and follow us. If I hadn’t done something, they’d be right on our tail and we’d have a serious problem.”

“More like you didn’t want to give me any more chance to change my mind about coming with you,” CT said, matching his stance.

“You think I could have kept you there if you actually tried to leave?” Needles said, giving her a look. CT shifted on her feet and forced herself to meet his eyes, shoulders squared. “You know as well as I do that you had to go. Don’t try and turn that back on me.”

“You didn’t give me a _choice_!” CT said, throwing up her arms. Making a frustrated noise, she turned and buried her face in her hands, taking a deep breath.

Of _course_ she had known that she had to leave. She had spent _weeks_ coming to terms with it. Weeks of preparing herself for the eventuality that she had to leave behind everyone she cared about without a single _word_. Of _course_ she knew, but that didn’t mean it was _easy,_ that she hadn’t been tempted to fight a little harder to _stay_.

“Fine, I’ll admit it,” she said, turning back around, “if I’d gone back then— yes, I would almost certainly have been caught. I defied direct orders, I disappeared, all on a mission where you guys clearly knew we were coming. So yes, I had to leave—but you didn’t _give_ me the chance to make that choice _myself_. You just _told_ me I had to leave and then, we were leaving!”

“She has a point,” Rat said.

Needles pinched his nose again. “You weren’t _there_ , Rat.”

“No, but unfortunately for me, your bullshit lives in my skull rent free, so I can imagine _exactly_ how that conversation went down, you total dickwad,” they said, dragging their hands down their face. Their voice was filled with a resigned kind of familiarity and a sharp sense of begrudging fondness. “I’ve known you for ages. You’re predictable as _shit_. So, I can say she has a point and I can also say: _apologise._ ”

“I was just—” Needles started, only to stall when Rat gave him a hard look. He sighed. “I’m sorry that you felt like you had no choice.”

“Non-apology. Fix it.”

Needles stared at them. They stared back.

“…I’m sorry that my behaviour made you feel like you had no choice.”

“Slightly better.”

CT wasn’t sure what she’d do without Rat around.

(Murder Needles outright, probably.)

“Now are you going to apologise for the _nuclear bomb_ you dropped on my team?” CT asked, tilting her head. “Or are you going to keep insisting that was the right call?”

Needles’ jaw flexed and she could almost _see_ him biting his tongue, considering his words. “Connie, I—”

“ _No_ , stop right there. You do not get to ‘Connie’ me again,” CT said, old and new tendrils of fear and grief coiling around her chest. “They could be _dead_. My friends could be _dead_ , vaporised or— or—” A lump swelled in her throat and she fought to swallow it.

There were worse things than vaporised. She didn’t want to think about those things.

“But they _won’t_ be,” Needles said. “If they detected the nuke, then they had plenty of time to—”

CT slammed her fists against his chest plate again and Needles let her, holding his hands away at his sides.

“ _If_ , Needles. _If!_ ” she said, unable to disguise the slight shaking in her voice—whether it was from anger, or fear, or something in between, she wasn’t sure. “ _If_ they detected, they’ll have gotten away, I _know_ that, I know the protocol, I know my team but— if they _didn’t_ , if they _didn’t_ detect it then it’s not the Director in his big, shielded ship that will have taken the hit, it’s my team in their dinky little Pelican! It’s my _friends_ , my _girlfriend_ — and _if_ they died, that’s on you and I would _never_ forgive you. _Never._ ”

The bridge fell silent. CT’s breathing had turned quick and uneven; her fists were clenched tight and her nails dug into her palms through the kevlar.

“Connie…” Needles said, trailing off before he could find any words to end the sentence with.

Feeling tears prick at the back of her eyes, CT took a deep breath and averted her gaze. “Where are my quarters?”

“Connie, can we please just talk like—”

Rat coughed. Needles sighed.

“Pod 180,” he said. “It’s already keyed to your biometrics. I can take you, if you—”

“I can find my own way. Thank you,” CT said, turning on her heel and leaving.

Even the ‘thank you’ felt too kind.

‘Pod’ was unfortunately a very apt description.

The _Staff of Charon_ wasn’t much smaller than the _Mother of Invention_ by dimensions alone, but it was equipped for a _much_ smaller accompaniment. What CT found at Pod 180 was a glorified hole in the wall, big enough for an inset bunk on the right side, a fold-out table above the mattress, and a footlocker beneath it.

It was a far cry from the two-person bunks found on the _Invention_ and though it would certainly be uncomfortable, she was almost grateful for the dissimilarity.

With barely room to move inside, she stripped her armour off in the corridor, giving anyone that passed by a look that challenged them to say something. None of them did.

Down to her undersuit, with her armour haphazardly scattered across the limited floor space in the pod, she locked the floor-to-ceiling sliding door behind her and fell back onto the bed.

She had nothing to stow in the footlocker. All she had was her armour and an ammo compartment full of items small enough to fit, not even enough for a drawer. She slipped her photo disc under the pillow, set her data-pad beside her and clutched the shrike’s tail in her still-gloved hand.

Knees curled up to her chest, she rocked back and forth. Focusing on the repetitive motion went some way to calming her rapidly beating heart.

She wished she had her beads. Why didn’t she think to bring her beads?

Trying to roll the tail between her hands only succeeded in stabbing herself on the sharp edges. The kevlar protected her skin, it drew no blood, but the sharp sensation where she had hoped for something soothing was almost enough to send her over the edge.

CT sucked in a breath.

_Not yet. Don’t lose it yet._

Now wasn’t the time, nor the place, to break down. Not in a dingy little pod in the wall of a strange ship, not when she didn’t know for sure if her team was alive or dead or worse. No, she had to keep it together. Somehow.

She’d done it. She’d left. She’d turned her back on everyone and run away. She’d left everyone behind and she could never go back and they could be _dead_ for all she knew and— and—

_Don’t lose it. Do_ not _lose it, CT._

CT buried her face in her knees and focused on the motion of her rocking.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a knock on the door finally startled her out of her— _state_.

For a second after, she pretended that she hadn’t heard it in hopes that whoever it was would just go away. Only when they knocked again did she groan and lift her head, almost knocking herself out on the wall behind her in the process.

“What?!” she snapped, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Go _away_ Needles, I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“Yeah, I’m not Needles. I have a bigger dick, for one,” Rat called from the other side of the door. “Several, actually.”

CT sighed in relief. “Oh, it’s you. I— one sec.”

Carefully stepping over the minefield of armour pieces, she opened the pod door. Rat was stood out on the walkway, out of armour and carrying a standard issue duffel bag.

“Brought you some clothes and shit,” they said, holding up the bag. “Seeing as you’re basically a runaway child with a little red knapsack on a stick.”

CT raised a brow at the description but didn’t comment on it. “Thanks. Sorry for snapping, I thought—”

“—that the dickhole had come to bother you again, yeah. Believe me, he tried. Repeatedly. I almost tied him to a chair, but there’s a chance he’d enjoy that, so I just locked him on the bridge,” Rat said, coming inside and dumping the duffel on the bed. “If you want, I can call someone to take this armour down to the armoury.”

“No, not— not yet,” CT said. She gathered it up as best as she could and piled it in one end of the room, clearing space for Rat to sit on the floor.

Rat shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

CT opened the duffel and pulled out a few sets of clothes, all around the right size. Several pairs of underwear, two pairs of sweats, three shirts, a small selection of sports bras in varying sizes. None of the shirts were brown.

She must have pulled a face of some kind, because Rat spoke up again.

“I took a bit of a wild guess with the sports bras, hopefully something fits.”

“No, that’s— thank you, one of these is my size and I have one on already so… it’s not that,” CT said. The shirt she was holding wrinkled in her grip. “I actually don’t remember the last time I wore something that wasn’t colour coded.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s stupid, I know,” she said, shaking her head and folding the shirt up neatly. “Even when we stopped at military stations, I would usually just be wearing black. There was this little black dress that South—” She faltered. Swallowed. “Anyway, I even wore a brown leather jacket, so… yeah. This is not something I thought I’d find weird and yet…”

CT shrugged. Rat shrugged too.

“Routine and shit,” they offered. CT nodded.

“Routine and shit,” she said, and started to undo her undersuit.

She settled for a plain white t-shirt and a pair of plain black sweats, nondescript and simple. The sizing was a little off, but they ran big rather than small, so they were comfortable enough. A pair of red socks protected her feet from the cold metal floor.

Her undersuit was folded neatly and tucked away in the underbed footlocker along with the spare clothes.

“Thank you,” she said again, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “This is much better than being stuck in my undersuit all trip.”

“Eh, don’t sweat it. That was the point. You already look more comfortable,” Rat said. They flopped onto their back and threw their legs up over the edge of the bed. “And also like you could kick my ass. Those arms are a fuckin’ gift.”

CT laughed, despite it all. “Thanks. Maybe we can spar some time.”

“I have the fighting skills of a worm on a string. You _would_ kick my ass.”

“You pistol whipped me just fine. Now I’m here, I can always give you some lessons,” CT said with a shrug. A sharp pang shot through her chest.

“That’s if Needles doesn’t try and wrap you up in fifty-something layers of bubble-wrap like one of those fancy-ass dolls. Y’know, the ones that only rich bitches have and then keep on their shelves and never play with?”

CT groaned and grabbed the pillow to bury her face in it, muffling the sound. Rat snickered.

“I’m going to kill him,” CT said. With the pillow propped against her knees, she rested her chin on it. “I’m not even kidding, I’m going to kill him if he doesn’t stop being— being—”

“Him?”

“ _Insufferable._ You should have heard him on the _Horizon._ He’s— he’s so _stubborn_ and _patronising_ and _touchy_ and— _ugh_.” She buried her face back into the pillow and breathed deeply for a few seconds before continuing. “And he said something like— like ‘I'm not gonna lose you over this’?”

“Oh my _god._ ”

“Like, what the hell was _that_?” CT said, her voice going up an octave. “What is he— our _only_ connection is through Keaton! And Keaton isn't even here, and I _get_ that he'd want me to be safe but—”

“Needles is gayer than a drawer full of rainbow short-shorts rigged with a confetti cannon full of rainbow confetti for good measure, if that's what you're worried about,” Rat said, completely straight-faced.

CT blinked at them. “…that’s quite a metaphor.”

Rat shrugged. “I try.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about though, no,” CT said, shaking her head. “It’s not hard to tell that he had— _has_ —a thing for Keaton. It’s obvious in everything he says about him. What I’m worried about is the fact that he’s only capable of seeing me as Keaton’s kid sibling when I’m a grown adult who’s spent the last few months acting as a double agent.”

“Oh, yeah, he definitely does that,” Rat said. “He doesn’t realise he’s doing it, but he absolutely fucking is, you’re right. Needles can be kind of a prick when he gets set on something. And by kind of, I mean a gigantic, throbbing prick.”

CT bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Stop making me laugh when I’m trying to be angry,” she said, without any conviction.

“Nah, your laugh is nice,” Rat said, grinning. CT smacked them lightly atop the head with the pillow. “But, seriously, you don’t have to put up with his bullshit. Fight him, give him the silent treatment, gag him, do whatever you want.”

“…do you _have_ gags? Wait, don’t answer that.”

Rat grinned wider.

“Hey, what’s that?” they asked, pointing at the disguised photo disc.

“Oh, it’s uh…” CT picked it up and fumbled with the controls. A holo-still projected from the top of the disc, one of her and South. She quickly swiped until it landed on an old family photo, instead. “Photo disc. I snuck it onto the _Invention_. We weren’t strictly supposed to bring things from our past, but… I wasn’t the only one who did it, by any means.”

“That PC you were working on was that other agent’s, wasn’t it?” Rat asked. Grabbing the edge of the bed, they swung themself up to sit on the mattress beside her.

CT swallowed. “Yeah, it was. The disc… was one of my little early acts of rebellion. Before I even really realised there was something real to rebel against.”

“Fuck, Keaton looks so _young_ ,” Rat said, poking his holographic face. It flickered. “I forgot that Needles took the fauxhawk from him, not the other way around.”

“Keaton was probably about… fourteen, there? Which makes me around twelve,” CT said, looking at her own youthful face. There was certainly a family resemblance between herself and Keaton; Needles wasn’t _wrong_ when he said they looked alike.

Rat squinted. “You look about ten.”

“I’ve always had kind of a baby face.”

“What else have you got on here? You flicked off something real quick,” Rat said, shuffling up as close to CT’s side as they could get. CT didn’t move away.

“That was uh— one of me and my girlfriend,” she said, pressing her palm flat against her thigh to stop herself from digging her nails into it.

“Did you actually ever show us what your girlfriend looked like?” Rat asked. CT tensed and shook her head. “You don’t have to like, show me. If you don’t want to. Just asking.”

“No, it’s okay,” CT said. Swallowing again, she scrolled back through the holo-stills until she reached the one that she’d skipped past. A simple, stupid selfie; South’s arm was wrapped around Connie’s shoulders and Connie was kissing South’s cheek. There was a pattern shaved into the short side of Connie’s hair. South had black eye that had just begun to heal and one of those beautiful, confident grins on her face. “That’s her.”

“Wow, she’s like the butch to Girlie’s femme.”

“That’s her,” CT repeated, though her voice threatened to crack. Tears once again attempted to well in her eyes and she bit her tongue, breathing in deeply. _Do_ not _lose it, especially not in front of someone._

“Hey, _hey_ ,” Rat said, grabbing CT by the face. “They’re gonna be _fine._ Needles didn’t even try and aim the stupid nuke—not that he can aim even his own piss—he just dropped it out of the ship like a piece of trash you might toss out the window on a car ride. They’d have to ram right into the thing, and it’s not like it’s easy to hide. For fuck’s sake, it’s black and yellow and has warning messages all over it like it’s the Bible Brigade’s response to a titty magazine. They’ll have detected it and gotten away.”

CT smiled slightly, though it didn’t linger for long.

“Logically I know that, but…” she said, sighing. Rat let go of her face and she let her head fall against their shoulder.

Rat patted her on the head.

“I can’t believe he dropped it at all. Who _does_ that?” CT swiped at her eyes. “I didn’t even want to leave yet. It took me _so_ long to accept and prepare for the fact that I had no choice. Then not even ten minutes after he gets me away, Needles drops a nuke on the people I left behind!”

“Like I said: Giant. Throbbing. Prick,” Rat said, poking CT on the nose with each word.

“I wasn’t kidding,” CT said, nose scrunched. “If they’re dead… I won’t forgive him.”

“No shit. I won’t either. Solidarity,” Rat said.

“You’re a lifesaver,” CT said. She clutched the disc and the tail against her chest, just above her heart.

Rat squeezed her around the shoulders.

They sat in silence for a little while, CT unsure of what else to say and Rat surprisingly content to just sit and be quiet as CT pulled out her knives to clean. It wasn’t perfect; she didn’t have her cleaning kit so she could only use her shirt, but, grasping for a single shred of familiarity in the soothing sensation of the cool metal between her fingers, she made do.

The dull thrum of the ship’s engines sounded wrong, at first, until CT realised that it just didn’t sound like the _Invention._ The _Staff of Charon_ was an entirely different beast in every way. Utilitarian and impersonal.

CT hoped she wouldn’t have to spend all of her time aboard it.

“How long is the jump set to be?” she asked, head still on Rat’s shoulder. She passed her second blade back and forth between her fingers, wrapped inside the folded material of her shirt.

“Few days, according to Obol,” Rat said.

CT cocked her head. “Obol?”

“Ship AI.” Oh, of course. “He’s not very talkative, you probably won’t see him. He just makes the calculations and stays out of the way. Top end estimate is about a week, lower end is four days.”

“I hope it’s four days,” CT said. “I’m tired of slipspace. I’m just— I’m just tired in general.”

“Want me to leave you alone?” Rat said, going to shuffle off the bed.

CT grabbed their arm and shook her head. “No, you can stay,” she said, something unsaid lingering in the air.

Rat sat back down.

CT spent the rest of her first day aboard in her pod with Rat and half of the next sleeping. Needles either had the sense not to bother her after Rat had locked him on the bridge, or Rat had kept him contained. CT didn’t know which and she didn’t particular care. Regardless of the answer, she did her best to avoid him once she finally left her quarters.

When she did, she found the tension on the _Staff of Charon_ thick enough to cut with a knife.

There wasn’t much to do with her time. She and Rat spent most of the day-cycle checking over the data she’d brought along for duplicate files; files that were out of place; and other surface-level discrepancies. It was boring but necessary work ahead of a deeper dive into the data, which itself would be all about preparing it to be presented to the authorities.

If that ever actually happened.

CT wasn’t _trying_ to be pessimistic, but what little optimism—if it could be called that—she was capable of was already taken up by the hope that her team had survived. Multiple days in slipspace meant no communications and no communications meant no information. It took all of her willpower to maintain that hope as the days went by.

Fixing the data was monotonous, but it gave her some semblance of routine that dulled the disorientation caused by the disruption of her old one. Plus, Needles couldn’t help, so it kept him away—for the most part.

“Hopefully I didn’t miss anything entirely when I made the fresh copy,” CT mused aloud to herself, as she moved yet another file into the right folder. “ _That_ would be a problem.”

“How much new stuff has there even been since your last drop? Can’t have been much.”

“Not a lot, but enough to seal my fate. The next four AI are going to Beta Squad agents,” CT said with a sigh, leaning back in her chair. “Which is about eight months’ worth of AI, assuming they don’t up their production again—though, I’m sure they will.”

Rat nodded along, then asked, “How confusing does that Beta AI and Beta Squad thing get to you, or are you just that much of a brainbox that it doesn’t bother you?”

“It’s kind of confusing, but I don’t really think of Texas as Beta. So, it helps to think of the file as the Texas file? Or Allison, though that feels weird too, even though I called her that in the video I left her.”

“In the _what_ you left her?” Needles said from behind them.

CT groaned. Electing to ignore him, she sat up and focused back on her screen. “Anyway, I don’t _think_ I forgot anything, but that evening is kind of a blur to me now so—”

Needles marched up to the terminals they were working at and stood in front of her. CT looked past him.

“You don’t get to give me the silent treatment this time, Connie. The _what_ you left Agent Texas?” he said, arms folded. CT sighed and looked up at him.

“The video I left her, on my dog tags, with all the other files,” she said, mimicking his folded arms. “Before you ask why I would do that, I did it because she deserved to know the truth about what she is and what she _is_ makes her the only person on that ship I felt like I could leave the data for.”

“Why would you leave any data behind in the first place?”

“Because—” Why did she? What had been her motivation? “—because it’s the only thing I could do to _maybe_ give my team access to the truth. And it’s a big maybe, because Texas doesn’t even use the locker room and I had to put them in her locker.”

“Connie—”

“There’s nothing dangerous on there, Needles. I’m not _stupid_. I took off any data that could have pointed them towards us; if Texas decides she wants to find me for any reason she has to do all the work herself. Not to mention,” she said, sitting up straighter, “I covered our asses by inserting a virus into the _Invention’s_ systems. Any intel on your bases, operations, personnel, was deleted twenty-four hours after I left the ship. I know what I’m doing.”

Needles stared at her and she stared back.

“You still should have told us,” he said.

CT shrugged. “I just did.”

“That’s not what I meant and—”

“—I know it, yes.”

Needles resumed his staring contest for a good thirty seconds before he rolled his eyes and stormed off, leaving CT and Rat to their work.

“Wow,” Rat said, staring at CT with a look she could only describe as ‘heart-eyed’. “You’re really learning how to shut him down.”

“I just can’t deal with him right now,” CT said, flexing her fingers to stop herself picking at her scar. Maybe her attitude was bordering on childish, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Not right then. Not when her entire world felt like it sat balanced on the edge of a precipice, one wrong move from falling.

The jump couldn’t end fast enough.

It was six days before they came out on the other side of the slipstream and _Styx Station_ was visible up ahead.

The expanse of star-speckled space around them was a relief to see. It meant they’d be off the ship soon. It meant she might finally be able to get a little bit more privacy and a proper night’s sleep in a less claustrophobia-inducing room. It _meant_ that they finally had communications up again.

The _Staff of Charon_ docked, and CT was swept up in a flurry of activity. Her armour was gathered and then whisked away to undergo basic maintenance. Immediately after, she was hurried away to another part of the station for a rushed tour, followed by a stop at her quarters—bigger than the pod, thank god, and much better equipped. There, she was handed a set of personal toiletries; a new weapons cleaning kit; some more fresh clothes in her size; and a new communication device and data-pad.

“For security purposes,” Rat said, “sorry.”

Her old comm. band had been ejected from an airlock as soon as she’d boarded the _Charon._ Her trusty old data-pad, on the other hand…

“No, I get it,” CT said, even though parting with the worn-down old data-pad felt… wrong, somehow. “Help me transfer everything important safely, that’s all that really matters in the end.”

Until they had the time to transfer it all—books, photos, chat-logs, notes—the old pad would have to stay powered down, just in case.

With that, they left her alone for a while to shower and get changed. The water pressure was better than on the ship and she lingered under it much longer than she needed to, letting it chip away some of the hard lines of stress carved into her muscles.

She finally stepped out when the water threatened to run cold.

The clothes were comfortable enough, but the texture was different than she was used to. The temperature of the room was slightly elevated. The mattress was almost too soft, the sheets a little too rough. She would get used to it, but, as she lay back on the bed, her subconscious kept cataloguing the little differences regardless.

How did it feel like she’d left the _Invention_ hours and months ago, all at once?

Only the rumbling of her stomach finally pulled her from the room and back to Rat and Needles, who had already made their way to the station’s mess. Soldiers in standard UNSC camouflage were scattered around the room, but they kept their distance from the central table where Rat and Needles were sat.

Rat waved and Needles beckoned her over. CT smiled, then took as long as possible to gather her plate of food.

Hot chicken wraps, with real salad and proper fries—not MRE standard, like she’d been eating for days, and nothing like the slightly false-tasting food on the _Invention_.

She sat by Rat and didn’t look at Needles, digging into her meal and appreciating the way the warmth of it made her feel just that little bit more alive.

Rat tilted their head at her and CT just shook her own, taking another bite of her food. So, Rat did her the favour of occupying Needles with idle chatter that CT didn’t care to listen to. She did, however, hear Rat redirect him every time he tried to talk to her; she was grateful for that.

By the time she was half-way through her plate, she felt bolstered. More in touch with the world.

Then, and only then, did she finally speak.

“So,” she said, swallowing, “what’s the plan here, exactly? I assume you _have_ a plan, since I also assume you’ve spent the time between our last meeting and the scrapyard working under the assumption that I was leaving.” She took another bite of her food. “Wow, that was a lot of assuming.”

Needles sighed. “Yes, I did begin to plan in _case_ you decided to leave. We had to be prepared for any eventuality where you ended up defecting.”

“Alright, then what’s the plan?”

Needles shifted uncomfortable in his seat and CT knew, in that instant, that she wouldn’t like whatever came out of his mouth next.

“We have to keep you moving,” he said. “The idea is to stay in one location for a couple of weeks, then move on. It means a lot of slipspace travel and a lot of disruption, but…”

“That’s the best way to keep the Project off our tail,” CT said, setting down her wrap. “Goddammit.”

She was right, she didn’t like it, but she couldn’t fault his logic. The Project would have a hard time making up for the lost ground, assuming her virus went off as planned, but no universe existed where they let her go free. If the information she had made it to the authorities, there would be no running from the charges laid against the Director and his associates.

Not only that, but her armour and her unit were much too valuable to let go and recovering them would provide Command with the perfect cover story.

“For the record,” she said, “I hate that idea, but it’s also not a bad idea.”

“I’ll take that,” Needles said.

“I still hate you too,” CT said, with a flat smile.

Needles sighed. “I know.”

“Are we going to spend any of that slipspace time in cryo, or are you keeping us awake to prolong my torture?” CT asked, picking her food back up.

“For longer jumps, we’ll go under, but most won’t be long enough to justify it. The _Charon_ is much faster than most ships; we have an experimental slipspace drive,” Needles said, then added quickly, as CT’s brow raised: “ _Fully_ tested. It’s based off a Covenant drive. It’s not _as_ fast as the original, but it does the job.”

“Alright. Prolonged torture it is,” CT said.

Rat gave Needles a look across the table, then turned back to CT. “Hey, _you_ promised me sparring lessons, stabby. You’ve gotta show me how better to kick some ass.”

“That I do,” CT said, giving them a genuine smile. “You are much better company, too.”

Needles sighed and stood up from the table.

“I have people looking out for signs of activity from the Freelancers,” he said, picking up his tray. “I’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

CT took a bite of her food to buy herself a moment to think, then decided in favour of politeness: “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Needles turned and walked away.

The first report of Freelancer activity came a few days later.

CT had settled into something resembling a routine. She’d tried to keep it simple, to organise her day around activities she’d be able to complete in whatever location they were currently at. She was doing a morning run around the halls when the alert came in on her new communicator—the sharp beep made her flinch and reminded her to change the tone of it, for her sanity’s sake.

She didn’t expect good news. Easier not to be disappointed, then.

She walked into the station’s command centre still in her running gear and chugging water from a new bottle, that was a little too big for her hand.

“What’s the news?” she asked.

“The Freelancers have been sighted attacking one of our facilities,” Needles said, as if she couldn’t gather that much from context. “It’s not a new location, they returned to an old facility we already knew they had on their radar, so it looks like your virus might have done its job.”

“Of course it did,” CT said, rolling her eyes. “So? Which Freelancers?”

“That… we don’t know.”

She knew she’d been right not to get her hopes up.

She narrowed her eyes. “How do you not _know?_ ”

“The report is unclear, they sent out a distress signal and we sent people to respond, but so far, that’s all we have,” Needles said. “We’ll know more in a couple days, hopefully. But it _does_ mean they weren’t all wiped out.”

“But it _doesn’t_ mean that my team wasn’t,” CT countered. Needles didn’t have a retort for that. “Call me again when you actually know. That could be Beta Squad, or Gamma even. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Needles sighed. “I just… wanted to let you know.”

“I know,” CT said, digging her nails into her palm. “I— I do appreciate that, but, _please_ , nothing else until you know it’s them. I can’t get my hopes up, Needles. I’m sure you can understand that much.”

“I can,” he said. There was a weight to the two words that CT couldn’t let herself dwell on, not then.

So, she stepped out of the command centre as quickly as she’d entered and finished her run. Next up was working on the data with Rat, which meant returning to the centre, but Needles was gone by then.

CT frowned.

She hated that she was starting to feel bad for hating _him_.

Needles kept his unspoken word. He only contacted her again two days later and, when she walked into the command centre, there were pictures on the screen. Blurry pictures, taken from the feed of a damaged security camera; unclear and barely decipherable, but _pictures._

The sight of familiar, purple and green armour knocked the air from her lungs.

“She’s alive,” she breathed, supporting her weight on the doorframe.

“ _They’re_ alive,” Needles said with a slight grimace, which he was trying and failing to hide. He gestured at the photos. “Looks like they all made it out.”

He didn’t _say_ ‘unfortunately’, but the implication hung heavy in the air regardless of whether he wanted it to or not.

CT bit her tongue both literally and metaphorically.

She approached the screens and panned through the images. Terrible quality or not, Needles was right; every active agent in Alpha Squad had been assigned to lay waste to the groundside facility associated with the _Cuuria_ scrapyard. What exactly they had hoped to find there CT wasn’t sure, but she also didn’t care.

They were alive _._

She slumped forward, her weight on her hands. They were _alive_.

“They caused a lot of damage, but we’d already pulled most of our personnel from that location,” Needles said, still stood at her shoulder. “The assumption is that they were hoping to find some coordinates, travel vectors… but whatever they wanted, they didn’t find it.”

“They’ll find it eventually,” CT said.

Needles sighed. He was doing that a lot lately.

“Connie, can we just… talk?” he asked, his brow wrinkled. “Where we don’t yell or argue, or we at least _try_ not to? Like it or not, we’re stuck together for the foreseeable future and… I don’t want to spend that time arguing.”

CT dug her teeth into her lip. Did she _want_ to talk? Not really. But did she want to spend the next however many months constantly fighting with and ignoring one of the two people she’d have for company?

No. No she didn’t.

“…okay,” she said, exhaling. “Okay, let’s talk.”

Rat was summoned as a mediator, though Needles argued that they had a bias towards CT. They elected to move away from the command centre into a more neutral space—a rec room that Needles emptied with a sharp order.

Alone, away from the screens and the pressure of the official setting, they sat opposite each other and talked.

“Dropping the nuke may have been… overkill,” Needles finally admitted, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them. “There were other ways that I could have stopped them from following us, but in the moment… I think I just wanted to get back at them.”

_Get back at them?!_ CT wanted to snap, but she didn’t. She breathed out slowly through her nose and said, “At least you admit that now. ‘Getting back at’ someone with a nuke is _pretty_ extreme, Needles.”

“I know, but— you have to understand, Connie, to us, to _me_ , they’re enemies, not friends. There’s a reason why the others don’t trust you much. And I have to protect them, just like I have to protect you; I owe it to them, and I owe it to Keaton.”

CT swallowed. Her brother’s name was beginning to sound like a curse.

“The Freelancers have only _ever_ been our enemy. They nearly _killed_ Sharkface, they blew Demo’s entire arm off! That Carolina woman nearly gutted Girlie, Sleeves got hit by a damn truck, Snipes too—that was all in _one_ day,” Needles said. “That doesn’t even account for every injury since, or the hundreds of soldiers they’ve torn through like they were nothing—all because they were told we were Insurrectionists.”

“Kinda proves old-us’s point,” Rat chimed in. “Like, seriously.”

Needles shook his head. “They have done untold damage to our boss’s research and to our _team_. You know that.”

“If you want to play the injury game, I have cards too,” CT said, keeping her voice as even as she could. “Sleeves shot out Maine’s _throat_ , he _emptied a clip_ into their throat—if they weren’t a Spartan, Maine would have died right then and there. Demo shot North with a chain gun. Snipes once shot South through the chest with a sniper round. Fuck, I could list _so many_ injuries, and yes, I'm sure you could list more too—”

Needles shut his mouth.

“—but they don’t _know_ , Needles. My team doesn’t _know,_ ” she continued. “And you dropped a goddamn _nuke_ on them right after you made me leave. Can you not see why I'm pissed?”

“…no, I mean— I mean yes. Yes, I can see,” Needles said, sighing again. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“Wow, Needles admitted someone else was right. It’s like snow in July,” Rat said.

Needles turned and gave them a deadpan look. “You know, you’re not much of a mediator,”

Rat shrugged. “You knew what you were getting when you asked for me.”

Rat 2 squeaked in agreement.

“I won’t deny what my team has done to yours,” CT said, drawing Needles’ eye back to her, “but they are _my_ team. They think they're doing the right thing. Both sides of this do. So, please… if they’re attacking you, sure, fight back—but that was _cheap_. And if you do it again, or anything like it, I don’t care that you’re doing this for my brother’s memory or— whatever. I’m not going to tolerate you acting the big man just for the sake of it.”

“That… is completely fair,” Needles said. “I’m sorry. Genuinely.”

She believed him, for once. He’d actually listened this time, instead of trying to argue against her at every turn.

Unfortunately, the conversation didn’t, _couldn’t_ , end there.

“…you do understand that I didn’t intend to _force_ you to leave, right?” he said, worried wrinkles once again creasing his features. “You couldn’t have stayed. You had no cover story.”

“I know, but the fact is…” It was her turn to sigh. “The fact _is_ , I wasn’t ready. I _know_ I had no choice; I know that I had to leave, but I wasn't _ready_ to leave and that's still true. Both of those things can be true at the same time.”

“Connie—” Needles started.

She held up a hand. He stopped and let her talk.

“I had to leave behind my friends. I had to leave behind a person who…” CT took a deep breath. “Who I _love_ , in a way I don’t think I’ve loved anyone before, and I couldn’t even tell her I was leaving.”

The words that followed flowed out with no input from her conscious mind and it became harder and harder to hold back the tears that kept fighting to get through.

“Do you know what that feels like? Feeling like that, then having to leave before you could even say the damn words? To have to abandon someone who was your _person_ , someone who you wanted nothing more than to trust, because you _couldn’t_? Because in the end, you couldn't believe that they'd see things the way you did? Do you? Do you know what it's like to give up someone who should have been your future?”

A beat of silence, just long enough for CT to feel stupid and stand up, ready to leave.

“Yeah,” Needles said, meeting her eye. His tone was heavy, solemn. “Yeah, I do.”

CT’s eyes widened. Oh. _Oh._

“…right,” she said, with a quiet, empty laugh, “of course you do. Keaton.”

“Keaton,” Needles said, sitting back in his seat. He laughed, too, and splayed a hand across his face. “I had to leave because he couldn’t look past the smaller picture to see the bigger one.”

“Yeah,” CT said, swallowing. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Guess we have more in common than you thought we did,” Needles said, peeking through his fingers.

“I guess so.”

He stood up, approaching her with his hands displayed openly. She didn’t flinch when he knelt and rested his them on her shoulders, squeezing reassuringly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry that you had to leave the people that matter to you. We only had to leave Keaton behind, I can’t imagine being… being the only one.”

Tears sprung in CT’s eyes and she shrugged his hands off her shoulders, pushing herself up from the seat.

Needles jumped back, hands in the air. “Whoa, I’m sorry, did I—”

“It’s not you, it’s— I just can’t do this in front of you,” she said, quickly, already feeling the boundaries of the world around her starting to retract. Familiar tendrils curled around her lungs and _squeezed_. “I can’t. I just— I can’t.”

“Connie?” Rat said, sliding down off the back of the couch between them. “Can’t do what?”

Tears dribbled down her cheeks and they kept coming, no matter how often she swiped her face. The dam had been broken and the flood was coming.

“Don’t follow me,” she ordered, turning on her heel and running.

She could feel their eyes burning into her back as she ran.

Something was always going to give eventually.

She slammed the door to the room—not _her_ room, she refused to call it _her_ room—behind her and fell to the floor.

She _left._

Fuck, she had _left._

She had abandoned her team. She had left them all behind in that Project that had killed so many agents and would certainly kill _more_. She _had_ to! She had to leave, because if she didn’t, _she’d_ be another statistic, another dead agent with a convenient cover story. She had no choice.

She had no _choice_.

So why did she feel so fucking _guilty?_

Hot tears rolled down Connie’s face and she choked on a vicious sob, buried her face in her knees, and _shook_.

What was happening now, back on the _Invention?_ What had happened in the aftermath of her leaving? When did people realise that she’d left at all? When did they realise where she’d gone?

In the hangar? When they were fleeing the threat of a nuclear blast? When they stood in the back of Niner’s Pelican and realised that either CT was dead, or she’d betrayed them?

When did they realise that she was a traitor?

Did they hate her?

North, York, Carolina, Maine, _Wash—_

_South._

Did they _hate_ her? The traitor, the mole, the _Insurrectionist_? Leaking UNSC secrets to the people who wanted to tear it all down even in the face of galactic war? Did they see her as everything she opposed, as all the principles she’d had to abandon when she was only a child because to not do so was to facilitate humanity’s extinction?

Did they see her as a liar? Did they question every little thing she’d said and done in the Project, from the most innocent joke to the promises she’d made and the relationships she’d formed? Did they think it was all just an act, just a performance put on by a double agent?

Did South— did South think she didn’t love her?

Connie had never even said it. She’d never had the courage.

_Fuck._ _FUCK._

She tried to stand, to pull herself up and over to the bed, but her knees gave out beneath her and she fell back against the door. Her head ricocheted off the metal, but the pain was muted and distant; even the sharp bite of her nails digging into her palms felt off, far away.

Pitiful, all-consuming sobs wracked her body as the ground beneath her finally crumbled, weakened by the weight of months upon months consumed by _lies_ and _paranoia_ and _loneliness_ that she had no outlet for, no way to handle.

One wrong step towards the precipice, and Connie fell.


	24. Keep Moving Forward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b5ce44fa09a75b8f55ba33b2ebac9f18/d9d420f6541a26fa-54/s640x960/52bc306294e3182bd32fd542947190b4fc612b84.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

Two weeks were spent and wasted at _Styx Station_ and then they were back on the _Staff of Charon_ , travelling through slipspace, exactly on schedule. According to Obol, the trip would take somewhere between four and six days, bringing them out the other end at a small, groundside facility on a moon orbiting a planet that had only been partly colonised before the war began.

The _Charon_ was still entirely too quiet, for a ship that never really slept. The scant personnel cycled through jobs and rounds in shifts, constantly active, but still it never really _felt_ alive. None of these people had faces; they weren’t the bright, colourful agents who Connie had known either from interactions or their files, nor the Project’s cannon fodder soldiers who followed some of the agents around like overexcited fans.

It was strange, but CT would get used to it eventually. It wasn’t as if she had a choice.

CT was the one that dragged herself up from the hole that Connie had fallen into, who had forcefully broken out of the spiral that threatened to suck her further and further down into the abyss. CT was the one who began to patch up the floor that had crumbled out beneath her with work and routine, refusing to let herself succumb to the despair and grief that threatened to choke her.

There was still work to do. There was still an end to reach.

Though Rat and Needles asked if she was okay, and though she could see the lingering worry in the wrinkled lines of Needles’ face and in the way Rat hovered a little closer than they needed to, they had the sense not to push it when she said she was.

The simple routine transferred well to the ship. She got lost on her first run, but she figured out a passable route and mapped it to memory. The shower pressure was still terrible, but it was better than nothing. The MREs were, well, MREs, but she picked out the few that she could tolerate to cycle though. She and Rat had hours to work on the data uninterrupted, which they needed.

Now beyond the point of simply organising and tidying the files, they had to prepare the data to be seen by the authorities. It had to be airtight, presentable—it had to shine a spotlight on the Director’s crimes in a way that whoever they took this to (the UNSC Judge Advocate? ONI? Someone else?) couldn’t deny, in a way the _Director_ couldn’t deny. Any gaps, any detail that didn’t hold up to intense scrutiny, _anything_ that could fall apart, needed to be bolstered. They had to have the information to support every claim.

They had to know what their claims _were_. In detail.

It was the perfect distraction. Working was familiar. CT could navigate the directory of files like the back of her hand. She could recite the Director’s crimes from memory and everything that supported each one.

She had to be able to, or this would all be for nothing.

The moon was called _Deter_ and the base was still in the ‘bubble-city’ stage of development, surrounded by other bubbles that had been abandoned and had subsequently begun to decay from misuse. Like the colony over which it hovered, it was half-finished, and not at the forefront of anyone’s minds. It probably wasn’t even on most starmaps.

No one would find them here; yet, even from the Pelican, CT couldn’t help but note all its defensive flaws.

Her room was C-20 and it was designed for two people.

She thought she could handle that, at first, as she set her new duffel down and started unpacking her belongings into the footlockers beneath her chosen bed. It was only when she realised her hands were shaking and that she couldn’t look across the room, for fear of seeing the empty bed she knew she’d find, that she decided to ask Rat to stay.

“There’s more subtle ways to proposition a person, y’know,” Rat had teased, and CT had laughed, tossing a pillow at their face.

It dissolved quickly into a pillow fight, of proportions previously unknown to man, and Rat had agreed to stay when they were flopped on the floor with battered pillows behind their heads, breathless from the exertion.

“Easier ways to get me panting, too,” they had teased again.

CT’s laugh was quieter this time, but at least she could blame it on the lack of breath.

Rat was familiar in a lot of ways they didn’t intend to be. Loud and brash and unashamed, they knew just how to make CT let down her walls and relax for a little while. Unpredictable, but safe, with energy that could fill a room.

The comparison was unfair to everyone involved, herself included, but it was there. She tried to push it aside and, in that moment at least, she succeeded.

“I get up early to run, just so you know,” CT had said, as she helped Rat unpack. They had much more stuff than she did.

“Eh, no big deal. Rat 2 will probably climb under your covers at some point and make a nest on your tits, so I’d call us even,” they had replied, flashing her a grin.

(Rat 2 did, in fact, do exactly that. CT couldn’t say she hadn’t been warned.)

It was on one of those runs that she noticed that the flaws in _Deter_ ’s base defences extended inside, too.

She tried to ignore it, the first time. She’d solidified her running route the day before and she was eager to settle into this base’s version of her routine, so when she noticed the non-networked cameras, huge blind spots and perpetually open secure doors, she told herself that it wasn’t important.

The second time, she ended up knocking on Needles’ door.

He appeared in the doorway in his pyjamas, his fauxhawk ruffled by sleep, looking more casual than CT had ever seen him. He blinked the sleep away from his eyes and squinted at her, as if unsure if she was really there or if he was just that tired.

“Yes, hello, I exist,” she said, waving a hand. “We need to beef up the base’s security.”

“Good morning to you too,” he said, casting a quick eye over her. He flinched away when his eyes reached the scar on her stomach. “We need to— one, why? Two, why are you telling me this? You’re rooming with our techie.”

“Because your room was ahead of me on my running route and my room is behind me,” CT said. Grabbing him by the arm, she tugged him out into the hallway and almost tipped him over in the process. “Look. You have multiple inactive security cameras and multiple secure doors that are propped open! That’s like, security one-o-one levels of failure.”

Needles looked, but after he looked, he sighed. “Connie, this is one of our safest locations. Freelancer probably didn’t have enough data on us to find it even before you erased their records. We don’t need to fix this stuff for a two week stop.”

CT folded her arms and cocked her head up at him.

“Who was the one who used to tell me to ‘be careful’ at every sign of potential trouble?” she said. Needles made a face like he’d just stubbed his toe. “Oh yeah, I’m turning that back on you now. _Every time_ , Needles. I could hear you saying it in my sleep.”

“Alright, alright, point taken,” he said, gently shoving her with a hand on her head. CT batted at it, half-heartedly. “Still, though, you need Rat’s help for anything security-based.”

“Fine, but run with me,” she said.

“I’m barely awake.”

“Tough shit, run with me. You can get changed super fast, or do it in your PJs, but come on.”

Needles stared at her, unblinking, until he was sure she wasn’t joking. Holding his hands up, he disappeared back into his room and came back out in running gear in record time.

“You’re totally going to speed ahead of me, aren’t you?” he said.

CT flashed him a grin and shrugged. “Make use of those long legs and keep up.”

They finished the lap of the base together and CT decided his company wasn’t so bad, when he remembered how to keep his mouth shut.

Despite sharing Needles’ skepticism in its necessity, Rat agreed to help her fix the problems in the base’s security in between their other work. The doors were closed, and their biometrics updated. The camera positions were adjusted, and they connected them to the base’s network with a few upgrades—both with the help of Needles, who proved to be the perfect height for Rat to sit on the shoulders of to reach them. CT even found a few flaws in the network security itself and patched them, with Rat’s help.

She knew Alpha and Beta Squad’s infiltration tactics almost as well as she knew her own code. She knew that, if they wanted, they’d be able to get themselves inside almost any base with minimal issue. More than that, she knew that, without her past self to warn the ‘Insurrectionists’ of an incoming attack, they had to be as prepared as possible because they _would_ come. One day, somewhere, Project Freelancer would come.

All they could do was give themselves a fighting chance.

So, she made a note to check for security flaws at every base, from then on.

Two weeks to the day later and they were on the move again. It took her longer to pack up her things than it had taken to unpack them; they’d gotten mixed in with Rat’s things or kicked under the bed or other mundane things like that. Mundane things that reminded her of places that were home but not home, in the not-so-distant past.

Obol said it would take them between a week to a week and a half, to reach their next destination—a space station called _Station_ _Nyx-VI_ , in a system CT had never heard of. The longest trip yet. On the _Invention_ , it would have been enough to put most of the ship to sleep, but not here.

“Why are we switching between the ship and bases or stations anyway?” CT asked Rat one afternoon, when they were working through the data again. She had to have repeated her ‘presentation’ tens of times, by then. “If we’re meant to stay moving, why not just stay on the ship?”

“I don’t know, ask Needles,” Rat said. CT gave them a look. “Hey, would you _wanna_ stay on this ship forever? It’s like a miniature dystopia made just for us. Needles hits his head on the ceiling of his sleeping pod every day. He doesn’t even get an upgrade for being the leader.”

“I guess that’s true,” CT said, tapping her fingers. Staying on the ship would probably drive her stir crazy; Pod 180 was much too small. “Okay, second question: why does Obol only give estimates? Back on the invention, we always knew how long a jump was going to be for us. Sometimes, we didn’t stick the arrival time, but…”

“ _That_ one I can answer.” Handing CT Rat 2, who happily clambered up to her shoulder the second she let them, they explained, “Like Needles said, our slipspace drive is experimental shit. Fancy-schmancy Covvie tech combined with the good old-fashioned Shaw-Fujikawa. It’s super fucking fast and Obol can pinpoint our _arrival_ to the frickin’ second—”

“ _The minute_ ,” a disembodied voice corrected. It was accented in a way CT didn’t recognise.

“—the minute, whatever, you pedantic little shit. Anyway, what he hasn’t figured out how to do is standardise the time _experienced_. No idea why, but it’s been a problem since we started using it,” Rat finished with a shrug.

“Not enough experience, or something? I know Smart AI learn.”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I like to tease him about his performance issues sometimes, see if it’ll make him rise to the challenge— _ha_ ,” they snickered. CT rolled her eyes with a smile. “But he doesn’t take the bait. Though, apparently, he’ll correct me now.”

They paused as if waiting for a response. Obol said nothing.

“Spoilsport,” Rat said. CT giggled.

“He’s a lot quieter than any of the AI I met,” she said, regretting the sentence more with every word. She started to pick at her hand. “Delta almost seemed like he’d learned how to joke by the time I left, and Sigma seemed to like the sound of his own voice, a bit too much in fact.”

“Sounds like someone we know,” Rat said, redirecting CT’s hand to the drawstring of her sweats.

CT tugged it three times before falling back to picking the scar and forced a smile.

“…North probably has Theta, by now,” she said, the smile faltering and falling away. “We should uh— we should account for that, in the presentation.”

Rat looked at her for a moment, with an expression in their eyes that CT didn’t want to analyse, before nodding.

“Yeah, probably,” they said.

Rat 2 squeaked by her ear. CT stopped scratching her palm to scratch the top of their head, instead.

_Station Nyx-VI_ had a training area, equipped to handle fully armoured combatants.

She found it on the floor plan, after she’d neatly unpacked everything in her duffel into the actual dresser the station’s room had—which made her minimal belongings look even more scant. Rat was still unpacking on the other side of the room, chatting to Rat 2 who always seemed to squeak back like it was an actual conversation.

“I didn’t realise this place would have a training floor,” CT said, double-tapping the room on her data-pad screen. It was somewhere between the size of the _Invention’s_ floor and chamber, plenty big enough for her purposes. “Let alone one suited for power armour.”

“Well, duh, that stuff is spreading now,” Rat said.

CT gave them a quizzical look.

“Oh, right, you lived in a fuckin’ information desert. They started distributing that type of armour to the front lines a while back. You guys in the experimentals had tested it and shit’s getting dire out there, so…” Rat shrugged, Rat 2 staying perfectly balanced on their shoulder. “We have a few places with floors equipped for it.”

The information sounded familiar. Somewhere in the Director’s personal communications, she had found correspondence with the UNSC about the gradually decreasing exclusivity of some of the Project’s tech. He hadn’t been happy about it.

“How come you’re still in ODST gear, then?” CT asked.

“Joke answer: it’s for the aesthetic,” Rat said. “Serious answer: we’re not the front lines. We don’t qualify.”

Right. Of course they weren’t.

Getting back into her armour after weeks without wearing it was… strange, to say the least. The pieces felt somehow heavier than she remembered, though she knew they weren’t. Remembering how to move in it, to compensate for the extra weight and girth, was like re-learning how to walk.

That process wasted a day and she sacrificed a second to make sure she was back up to speed with the fundamentals, before she threw herself into what she really wanted to practice.

She had no external power supply to fall back on, nor to use to get used to the mechanics of her unit again after so long. The first hologram slammed back against her like a brick to the back of the skull, the phantom muscle she’d become so used to flexing now snapping under the ache of neglect.

Iron didn’t bite at her senses, though. So, her tolerance wasn’t _entirely_ gone.

She’d just have to get back to basics.

Projecting a hologram a few feet ahead of her, she visualised all the ways she wanted it to move and watched it happen. Jittery and stiff, at first, the motions smoothed with practice. Every few minutes she would have to take a break as the pressure at the back of her skull grew too heavy to ignore, but with each test the phantom limb relaxed a little more.

Enough so that, the next day, she felt comfortable practicing the real thing.

One hologram, jumping out diagonally as she bolted straight. A second left behind as she ducked behind a pillar. The third leaping up from behind it, so she could dash to the next piece of cover.

She skidded to a stop with a spinning head, but no blood under her nose. Panting, she gave herself five minutes and then got up and ran three holograms again.

The next day, she ran four. The next, she tried five, but the bitter scent of blood returned and she was forced to settle at four, no matter how frustrating it was.

The training became part of her routine aboard _Nyx-VI_. Wake up, eat, run, train, shower, work, eat, clean knives, sleep. She had to take advantage of the space whilst she had it. She had to do what she could even when she _didn’t_. The agents still with the Project wouldn’t be letting themselves go; they’d be training every day, like always.

She couldn’t let herself fall behind. Doing so could be the end of her.

The feeling of eyes on her back made her spin on her heel, one day early in their second week there. Rat was waving from behind one of the viewing windows, barely elevated above the training zone. CT exhaled and cursed quietly at herself under her breath—the paranoia should have been gone, by now.

Slumping against the wall of the observation room with Rat beside her, it took CT three attempts to bring her bottle to her lips, instead of just imagining it. Chugging the cool water, she thought about how a lot of other things should have changed, by now, too.

“That was _impressive shit_ ,” Rat said, eyes lit up. “You’ve told us about your unit before, but I didn’t know it was _that_ cool.”

“It is pretty cool, isn’t it?” CT said, smiling despite herself. It fell quickly. “I remember when I first got it, I was… _so_ excited to try it out. We’re in the middle of an intergalactic war and this thing still felt like it belonged in a science fiction novel.”

“You look like you could kick someone’s ass ten ways from Sunday and come back for more with the help of that thing. Shame they’re not like, hard-light or something funky like that.” 

“Okay, one: isn’t the phrase six ways from Sunday?”

“Yeah, but six isn’t enough for how badass you are.”

CT bit back a laugh.

“Two: we barely had functioning hard-light shields, I think hard-light holograms really _is_ still the territory of science fiction,” CT said, nudging them in the side with her elbow.

They plucked the bottle she was drinking from out of her hands and pulled down their mask to take a swig.

“Imagine being the first dude to get punched by a hologram. That’ll suck,” they said, wiping their lips.

CT snatched the bottle back with a shake of her head.

“You still owe me those fighting lessons,” Rat said, mask back in place. “You going to make me try to kick your ass in that armour? Because I’m pretty sure I’d die.”

“No, of course not,” CT said, before amending it to: “not right away, anyway. You’ll need to learn how to work around the armour eventually, but you actually have to know how to fight at all, first.”

“Which I don’t.”

“Which you don’t.”

“Still kicked your ass that one time though,” Rat teased, dropping their head against her shoulder. CT let her head fall against theirs and made a quiet noise of agreement.

They were on the floor getting ready to start their first lesson when the alert came through, loud and shrill on their communicators. CT flinched—changing the sound had only done so much—but followed Rat off the floor to meet Needles. She was reassured by their casual complaining about the interruption, until they saw Needles’ face and the bustling security detail around him.

“What’s wrong?” CT asked. “Why are they packing up?”

“We detected a slipspace rupture not far from here,” Needles said, as he fastened his armour in place. “Signature matches the _Mother of Invention._ They’ve found us.”

CT’s blood ran cold and suddenly, the air in the room felt thick and unbreathable.

“ _Us_ ,” Rat said, gesturing at CT, “or the base?”

“No idea. Doesn’t really matter which, either. We need to get out of here, so go pack up your stuff, and get to the _Charon_. We’re leaving,” Needles said. “ _Now._ ”

Packing her stuff took both no time at all and too much time, all at once. No more than half an hour could have passed before they had returned to the _Charon_ and the ship was pulling away from the station, but every minute felt like double that.

Sat in her tiny pod, CT breathed deeply and rolled a bullet casing between her palms.

They were in slipspace in record time.

One week, two days.

It happened again at the next base, a larger groundside facility in the middle of nowhere that functioned as a glorified storage unit. CT had unpacked only a few days previous when the alert came through and they were rushed out, back up to the _Charon_ and whisked away again.

“How are they finding us?!” Needles paced back and forth across the bridge, frustration displayed vibrantly on his sleeve. “Once, I could have excused as them finding one of our facilities without knowing we were there, but _twice_? We got rid of that damn glorified tracker you had! How is this happening?”

The comm. band, the only tracker on her person, was either floating amongst scrap or vaporised by a nuke, far away and more than out of the equation.

“They’ve had time to start building back up an intel packet on you,” CT said, scratching her wrist. “On— us, I mean, on _us_. Anyway, the point is… we knew that locking them out of old information wouldn’t stop them forever.”

“But where are they getting the new information? And how did they follow us _directly_ from one to the next?”

“Most of the idiots running our other bases’ security measures aren’t as good as I am,” Rat said. “You saw the state of the base on _Deter_. Connie pointed it out. There’s other places just as bad and worse and I’m not there right now to stick my foot up their ass and make them fix it.”

“They could also have found a way of tracking us,” CT sighed. “Not to mention, we didn’t have time to strip the last base down. They could have found things there that lead them to us now.”

Needles’ jaw tightened. “Right. That’s… true.”

CT rested a hand on his arm and squeezed—half to reassure him and half to stop herself from picking her damn scar again.

“I’ll try and build some software to scramble anyone that tries to track us,” she said. “There’s only so much software can do, but it’s better than nothing. Rat, maybe you can get some protocols set up for when we have to leave quickly, so we make sure we wipe everything that could lead to us?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Rat said. “And I’ll think of all the ways I can yell at some idiots in other bases too, for good measure.”

“We’ll figure it out, Needles,” CT said, squeezing his arm again.

He rested his hand on top of hers and sighed, but nodded. Some of the tension in his body eased, just as CT’s own spiked.

They were forced to drop out of slipspace at short notice, both to give Rat time to issue a code-push across their (also experimental) superluminal network and to change coordinates last minute to a different base than originally planned.

Software wise, the best CT could do was adapt what she still had of TURNCOAT’s core code into something that could disguise their signals once someone was in range to track them. Everything else was on Obol, who didn’t exactly _tell_ her that he was increasing the protections he placed around their coordinates and travel vectors, but didn’t hide the changes he’d made after she asked him to in a fit of paranoia-driven frustration.

He wasn’t talkative, no, but at least he seemed helpful.

Still, it didn’t feel like enough.

When they found them at the next base within days, too, CT realised there was one thing she hadn’t checked.

The tracker in her armour wasn’t hard to remove, once she found it. Latent programming from the emergency beacon in every suit of armour, designed to send out a distress signal when your vitals dropped below a certain level. Or, apparently, when it detected that the armour had connected to an enemy network.

When the signal stopped transmitting, CT dropped her head back against the wall behind her and breathed.

It wasn’t a guarantee. It wouldn’t stop them from finding other ways to find her.

But at the next base, no one came. They spent the full two weeks there without interruption.

So, it had bought them time.

Only after they made it through a second base without interruptions did CT set aside the time to start teaching Rat.

Standing almost half a foot shorter than CT, Rat was quicker and scrappier than she was, without any of the training they needed to support it. Rat’s style of fighting started and ended with ‘whatever will keep me alive for a few more seconds’ and whilst that wasn’t a poor principle to operate on, headbutts, pistol-whips, and _biting_ could only get someone so far.

“I’ve taken a man’s finger off before,” Rat said, much too proudly.

CT paused half-way through helping Rat wrap their fists.

“Please don’t bite my finger off,” she said, finishing what she started.

“Me, bite off any of the fingers that have written the code you write? Never,” Rat said, winking. “Too valuable.”

“I can never tell if you’re flirting with me, or my code,” CT said, tying the wraps off and stepping back. “Alright, come on. You can’t bite off someone’s finger when they’re in armour.”

“I can do my damnedest.”

“You wear a _helmet._ ”

“That means nothing.”

Laughing under her breath, CT shook her head and beckoned them forward. “Come on, take a swing.”

Rat came at her and CT had them on the floor in seconds. Repeatedly. For several rounds. Rat didn’t really seem to mind, and she had to get a sense of their mobility and instincts before she could try to teach them anything substantial.

“Your best bet is going to be to learn how to dodge. Any strike you do take will need to be calculated, you’ll have to aim for your target’s weak points,” CT said, falling back into stance.

“Like the balls,” Rat offered.

“Out of armour, yes, if you hit someone between the legs you have a decent chance of flooring them. In armour, not so much,” CT said. “I’m talking more the space just beneath the chestplate, the stomach, the inside of the knee, or the armpit. All unarmoured, all have their strengths for taking an opponent down.”

“I don’t think I could reach some of those, depending on the person,” Rat said, bouncing on their toes. When they came at her again, CT dodged out of the way but didn’t retaliate.

“What, the knee?” she teased. Rat swung at her head and their fist passed over her shoulder. “Maybe I should get Needles in here. I can demonstrate stuff for you, and you might be more motivated to beat him up than you are me.”

Rat’s face split with a grin. “ _Abso-fucking-lutely_ do that.”

Needles arrived a few minutes later and said: “Did you really have to phrase the question as ‘will you come and let us beat you up’?”

“Yes,” Rat and CT replied in unison.

Sparring with Needles was easier. CT fell into a rhythm of kicks and punches and feints, narrating her choices and the flaws in Needles’ own to Rat, breathless but straightforward. Needles swung wide and blocked well; he didn’t fall easily for CT’s misdirections and she wondered, idly, how he’d do against her unit.

She let the first couple of rounds go on longer than they needed to and beat Needles both times, knocking him to and then pinning him to the ground. He took her offered hand and pulled himself up to his feet, panting but showing no tell-tale signs of a bruised ego as he smiled at her.

“Best of five?” he asked.

“No,” CT said, before she even consciously thought the word. Needles blinked. “I mean— we’re not keeping score. Okay? No scores. This isn’t a competition, this is practice.”

Needles held up his hands and, though there was worry in his eyes, simply said: “Okay. No scores.”

CT huffed and slipped back into stance.

Teaching the ‘lessons’ was hard enough as it was, when her mind kept trying to draw her attention to old memories of helping Wash with his knife technique. When she realised that learning how to use a knife would be in Rat’s best interest, her stomach sank in a way that it had no right to.

She put off handing them a training knife for two days, when she finally convinced herself she was being selfish.

“I prefer the reverse grip. You have to slash, not stab, when you use it, so it might not seem as effective, but get the right angle and…”

She mimed the motion across Needles’ gut, leaving a chalk mark behind.

“You may be able to get them to spill their guts, in more ways than one.”

Rat laughed and Needles pulled a face, whilst CT flinched at her own words and buried her memories. These people were her team now, too, and she had to make sure that if— _when_ —the Freelancers came for them again, they had every tool at their disposal to fight back.

She’d brought this to their doorstep. It was the least she could do.

Slipspace jumps were becoming unbelievably boring.

Perhaps unbelievably was the wrong word. Slipspace was empty and monotonous by nature. Whilst on the _Invention_ , the jumps CT had spent awake had, however, been filled with activity, whilst the jumps aboard the _Charon_ were devoid of anything beyond her daily routine and the welcome, but sometimes tedious, company of her only two companions.

Needles had grown on her and Rat remained just as good company as they ever were, but there was only so much time you could spend with two people before you needed some time alone.

CT sat on the bridge, tossing a ball she’d found lying around one of the bases idly, talking through her data on the Project for the thousandth time. Rat was off doing… whatever they did, when they were alone, and CT had nothing better to do with her time or with the data. She’d processed it in every possible way. She’d memorised parts of it, word for word.

There would undoubtedly be more relevant data in the Project’s own systems by then, but it wasn’t as if she could access it. She had no choice but to submit incomplete information, whenever and to whoever they actually found the opportunity to do so.

So, she read what she had aloud to the elusive Obol, because there was nothing better to do.

He didn’t say anything, at first. She didn’t expect him to. He’d barely said a word in all the time she’d spent on the _Charon_ and CT didn’t expect that fact to change. Which made it a nice surprise when, after she addressed him with the question:

“Hey Obol, you’d know. Exactly how bad of an idea is it to deliberately damage the AI that’s meant to calculate your slipspace trajectories and generally stop the ship from crashing?”

He responded with, “ _That would be a terrible idea. Performing slipspace functions running at sub-optimal capacity can lead to extreme miscalculations, which could have resulted in emerging from slipspace completely off target, if you ever made it out at all._ ”

“That’s the longest sentence I’ve heard you say,” CT said, looking around the room. Still no sign of a hologram. “Also, thanks, the concept of being stuck indefinitely in slipspace is absolutely terrifying. You’ve certainly made me appreciate being on this ship and not the _Invention_ anymore.”

“ _There is also the potential for exiting slipspace inside a solid structure or object._ ”

“Wow. I wonder if the Director was stupid or simply willing to take the risk of killing us all,” CT said, tossing the ball up again.

“ _Those statements don’t seem mutually exclusive._ ”

CT leaned back in her chair. “Fair point.”

“We’ve got company.”

Needles stood in the open doorway of the security centre and Rat spun in their chair to face him, mouth already open to respond as the shot of adrenaline rushed up CT’s spine.

She’d lurched up from her chair and was already planning the quickest route back through the base to grab her still-packed bag when Needles held up his hands and spoke again.

“Whoa, hey, not that kind of company,” he said, eyes wide and apologetic.

Rat glared at him. “ _Really?_ ”

“I didn’t think that choice of words through, sorry.”

“No shit you didn’t,” CT said, falling back into her chair and covering her face with her hands. _Breathe, CT, breathe._

“We have a _visitor_ ,” Needles clarified, looking directly at Rat. Rat rolled their eyes and hopped up to their feet. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, Connie. You stay here and keep yourself busy.”

“I’ll be back,” Rat said, poking CT in the back of the head. CT half-heartedly batted at their hand. “Don’t run away.”

“I won’t,” CT said, reclining her seat. Rat and Needles left the room and CT sighed, her head falling over the back of the chair. “Keep myself busy with _what?_ There’s nothing to do. Couldn’t even run away if I wanted to, there’s nowhere to go.”

The empty room didn’t answer her.

It wasn’t the first time she’d suddenly been left to her own devices, but it was the first time she remembered Needles mentioning a ‘visitor’ in relation to it. Usually, Rat and Needles disappeared to do what she assumed were duties they owed the rest of their team, but thinking back, she’d never heard them call it that.

CT frowned.

Curiosity got the better of her within five minutes. She had full access to the base’s cameras through Rat’s clearance and finding them on the feeds wasn’t difficult; there weren’t that many people around to begin with, so the bald head of their visitor stuck out like a sore thumb.

She couldn’t, however, see his face. So, slowly, she adjusted the angle of the camera—until Rat looked right at it and gave her a pointed look.

CT disconnected from the feed.

“Who _was_ that?” she asked Rat later, when they were sat in their shared room. “The visitor, I mean.”

Rat didn’t answer immediately, not until CT threw an almond at them. They snatched it up and ate it, much like Rat 2 did with an offered treat.

“That’s the boss,” Rat said. “Like, the big boss dude. Top of the boot-licking food chain. Big Dick McGee.”

“Why the last one? Why?”

Rat flashed her a grin. CT shook her head.

“Anyway… how come Needles didn’t just tell me that?” she asked, brow furrowing slightly. “I’ve yet to meet the guy. Have meetings with him been behind every time you’ve told me to busy myself elsewhere?”

“Maybe.” Beat. “Yes. Look, the boss… doesn’t _technically_ know that you’re here. He knows _about_ you, don’t get me wrong, but he doesn’t… know we like, kidnapped you. Or whatever.”

CT stared at them, blinking slowly.

“I know that sounds completely fucking crazy, which it is, but—” Rat started, only to get cut off as CT burst out laughing. “Wow, that was _not_ the reaction I expected to get.”

“I’m sorry, that’s just— oh my _god_ ,” CT said. She was still laughing as she flopped back against the bed with her arms over her face. “I shouldn’t be laughing. I shouldn’t. You haven’t even _told_ your _boss_ that you’re carting an ex-double agent around! After— after weeks, _months_.”

“Then why _are_ you laughing?”

“I don’t know!” she said, throwing her hands up. “Because— because that’s _ridiculous_ and if I don’t laugh, what else am I gonna do?”

Because if she thought about it too hard, there was a risk she’d start wanting to kill Needles again, and she’d become so used to almost liking him.

No, processing whatever that information meant was a problem for future CT.

For the sake of a lot of things.

Every day passed on autopilot, after a while. Sleep, eat, run, spar, shower, work, eat, clean knives, sleep—over and over, day after day, with only mild variation based on if they were in slipspace or on a station or in a base. The Project had been monotonous in many ways, but the people and the missions and the schedule rotations kept things varied to _some_ degree.

That variety no longer existed.

Rat had made progress in their training, there was that. They were capable of knocking Needles off his feet and holding their own in a close-quarters scenario for long enough to get them by. More practice and more teaching would hone their growing skills further, but it was a good start.

At one point, CT sat down and dug around in her unit’s code again, but she found that she simply couldn’t do anything to improve it further. The changes she had made that first night after she received it had stuck; the hologram was as perfect as it was ever going to be. She wasted hours poking around before she reverted all new changes.

She’d run out of ways to work through the data. The ‘work’ slot in her routine quickly became another stretch of wasted time where CT wasn’t sure what to do. She watched Rat work. She checked and double-checked their encryption protocols. She stared at the same data she’d looked at a million times before, wondering where the hell they were going to take it and ruling out all the same things she’d already ruled out before.

She got _bored_.

“Hey, Obol. If I designed a program that could turn on my usual shower, temperature set and everything, _exactly_ when I finish my morning run, could you run it?” she asked, spinning back and forth in her chair.

Obol was quiet for a long moment, defined only by the nebulous sensation of the air thickening in lieu of a response, before answering: “ _No, but the ship’s infrastructural AI could, if you like. I can’t see how it would be a problem._ ”

“Awesome, thank you Obol.”

“ _You’re welcome,_ ” he replied. Still no hologram.

If she couldn’t work, she could at least code a few nonsense programs to pass the time, she supposed.

“I’m just so _bored_ , you know?”

Lounged against Rat’s side, CT took a swig of her gin. The glass was already half-empty.

“I have _nothing_ to do, day-to-day. How many times have we gone over the data together? Like— a thousand?”

“A fucking million, more like,” Rat said, hand wrapped around a glass full of the watermelon vodka, sat beside them in a bottle. “Started seeing that shit in my sleep. And it is _not_ fun to get the latest n’ greatest pudding-laden nonsense interrupted with fucking _code_.”

“Okay, a million then. A _million_ times we’ve gone over that data. I can’t even gather new intel because I can’t access the Project’s files from here. We could be missing so much important stuff! And yet,” she laughed, “and yet I spent yesterday coding something to turn on the coffee machine so that it finishes my drink right when I get to it.”

“ _Wow_ , Con. You actually coded that old joke? How bored _are_ you?”

“Extremely! That’s the point!” CT said, still laughing. “Look, I love you guys, I genuinely have come to love you guys—but I have barely seen or had a conversation with anyone but you two and Obol for _months_ now. I’m not just bored, I’m losing my mind.”

“Girlie and Demo were at the last base.”

“They won’t even look at me, let alone have a conversation with me, and you know it. They hate me. They think I’m going to stab you all in the back, which is a shame, because Girlie’s knives look _fascinating_ and I’d love to take a look at them,” CT said, taking another sip.

A grin slowly spread across Rat’s face. “…do you mean her actual knives, or was that a really bad euphemism for boobs?”

CT almost choked on her drink.

“Oh _fuck_ , I killed Connie.”

“Her actual knives!” CT choked out through another burst of laughter, wiping her mouth. “You know, the ones with hearts cut out of them? Oh my _god_ , Rat.”

“Hey, they’re good boobs,” Rat said with a shrug. “But yours are better.”

CT sat up and turned to stare at them. Rat winked.

“So it _is_ me you’re flirting with, not my code,” CT said after a moment to compose herself, her amused smirk bolstered by the faint effects of the alcohol.

“ _Duh_. Your code is sexy as fuck but so are you, I’ve not exactly been _subtle_ ,” Rat said, throwing back the remainder of their glass. They waggled their eyebrows at her and CT didn’t bother to bite back another laugh.

“I’m not always the best at picking that stuff up,” she said, setting her drink down. “You need to be a little more forwa— _mmph_!”

There were lips on hers and hands on her hips, firm but not demanding. CT’s breath caught in her throat, every point of pressure a sudden spark of surprise shooting across her body. Rat’s lips were slightly chapped, that was her first thought. Her second thought was that they were _kissing her_ and once that realisation actually hit, it was all too easy to lean into it and kiss back.

Rat wasted no time in pulling themself into CT’s lap, or in sliding CT’s shirt up over her stomach. Their fingers were deft, nimble; they had the material bunched against their wrists in seconds, fingertips dancing along the bottom of CT’s sports bra.

Every touch was another spark, another familiar and yet unfamiliar shock of sensation that startled gasps from her more quickly than it had any right to. CT retaliated in kind, fingertips trailing up the dip of Rat’s spine and the shape of their shoulder blades—an instinctive motion, tracing over patterns that weren’t there.

Quickly, her hands retreated to their waistband and drifted down over the shape of their ass and thighs as they shimmied out of their pants happily and their own hands breached the skin-tight seam of her sports bra to grasp at the soft flesh beneath.

The moan that slipped past CT’s lips was exactly what they were looking for, but it was also what broke the spell.

What was she _doing_?

“Wait, wait, stop,” she said, lips barely off of Rat’s. “I can’t— I can’t do this.”

Rat’s hands were gone in an instant.

“Are you okay?” they asked, cupping her face instead. “Was that too much?”

“I’m fine, you’re fine, I just— I can’t, I can’t. This isn’t fair to you and it’s not fair to—” CT swallowed, averting her eyes. “It’s not fair to Natasha.”

“Natasha—?”

“South,” CT said. “We… I didn’t break up with her before I left.”

Rat blinked, then their eyes widened. “Oh. _Oooh._ ”

Though they didn’t bother to pull their pants back on, they slid off CT’s lap and sat in front of her, instead. CT looked at the floor and stuffed her hand into the bend of her knee to stop herself scratching.

“Maybe I should have,” she said, rocking back and forth. “But— but I couldn’t, not without her realising something was wrong. Or hurting her. I’d already lied to her so many times, breaking up with her would have felt like… like another lie? I don’t know, this doesn’t justify anything.”

“You don’t have to justify shit, Con,” Rat said, resting their hands on her knees. They didn’t still her, simply reassured. “But you can talk all you like.”

What _would_ she have done without Rat?

“I love South,” Connie said, swallowing the lump rising in her throat. “I never even _said_ that to her. We told ourselves it wouldn't be anything serious, so I never even said the words ‘I love you’, because then… then it is, isn’t it? Only, it became serious anyway. We just didn’t admit that to ourselves.”

Breathing deeply, she closed her eyes and levelled herself.

Rat squeezed her knee.

“You’re so much like her, you know,” CT said. “It’s unfair to make the comparison but— but it’s true, you have a _lot_ in common.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Rat said. As CT’s rocking stilled naturally, they shuffled to sit beside her.

“It is,” CT said. Her head fell back against the wall. “I really love her, Rat. And—” what? And _what?_

CT cut herself off and shook her head. Nothing else she could say would really say anything more at all.

“I won’t pretend I get it, because I fuckin’ sure as hell don’t,” Rat said. Their arm wrapped around CT’s shoulders and she leaned into them. “But I hear ya.”

“Thank you,” she said. “That… that means more than you know.”

Rat kissed CT’s temple and she smiled, despite it all.

The next time Freelancer found them, they didn’t see it coming.

CT was making use of the armoured training space, running through unit drills, when the silent alarm was triggered.

Her latest hologram mimicked the confused turn of her head as it flickered and dissolved.

“What the—?” she said, pulling up the facility’s maps on her HUD. Her heart leapt into her throat. The alarm had been triggered near one of the entrances on the south side—not far from her. “ _Shit._ ”

Her radio crackled to life.

“ _Connie, where are you?_ ” Needles asked. In the background, she could hear the tell-tale sounds of armour being strapped and snapped into place.

“On the training deck,” she answered. Scanning the room, she cursed under her breath when she realised her only exit took her even closer to the south side. “Where are you?”

“ _East-side armoury. Rat’s shutting everything down at the command centre. Isn’t the training deck on—?_ ”

“The south side? Yeah, yeah it is.”

“ _Shit._ ”

“That’s what I said. Do we know if—?”

“ _—they’re here for you? I don’t think so, not this time. This is a research and testing facility, one of their favourite types of target; they’re probably here looking for more tech to steal,_ ” Needles said. Raised voices sprung up in the background and he muted himself.

The facility had been running tests with some of the same Covenant gear that many of the Project’s experimental units were based on. Needles was right; the Director would certainly want to cut off and acquire any research that the ‘Insurrectionist’s researchers may have performed there.

In some ways, that was a relief. If they weren’t here for her, then getting away wouldn’t be so hard.

CT snatched up her duffel from the edge of the deck and made her way to the exit. Keeping an eye on her motion trackers, she scanned the hallway ahead of her. After a second, she deemed it clear and moved ahead.

Needles unmuted himself. “ _Apparently, there’s only two agents here. They’re definitely not here for you._ ”

“How do they know there’s only two? They’re good at this, and with Wyoming’s unit… don’t underestimate them.”

“ _I’m not, Connie. Do you know how to get to the motor pool?_ ”

“Yes, I know how to get to the motor pool,” CT said, a little sharper than she intended. She moved into the adjoining hallway. “Are you on the way?”

“ _Of course. Hurry, Connie._ ”

“I’m hurrying.”

Heart pounding in her ears, she moved as quickly as she dared to through the halls of the base. All going well, whichever agent had triggered the silent alarm would either still be far behind her at the south entrance or have moved ahead into the facility before she even left the training space.

She checked every corner before she turned it. She boosted her audio suite and listened for any unfamiliar sound. She even primed her unit, ready to fire off a hologram at short notice. CT would _not_ be caught off guard alone, not if she had anything to say about it.

Only, two turns away from the motor pool, her say in the matter was removed entirely.

Maybe CT looked too quickly around the corner, or maybe they were just quick and had darted in after she’d looked away. The why and how didn’t matter, what mattered was that she turned into another hallway and came face to face with a familiar suit of purple armour standing at the other end, staring back at her like all the wind had been knocked out of both of them with just a glance.

Her radio crackled in her ear, but Connie didn’t hear the words.

South didn’t move a muscle. She just stood there, stiller than Connie had ever seen her, only the slight movement of her breathing reminding Connie that this wasn’t just a dream. This was real.

_They still had her running stealth assignments_ , was, absurdly, Connie’s first thought.

Her second was, _Oh god. It’s really her._

Neither of them spoke or tried to approach the other. South stared at Connie and Connie stared at South, and the air between them felt disturbed and tense in a way that threatened to wrap around Connie’s throat, to choke the air from her lungs.

She wanted to reach out. She wanted to say _something_ , _anything_ —the right words that could make everything make sense, could explain to South why she’d left and why she _had_ to leave. Words were born and died in the back of her throat and with every loss, the air between them grew heavier.

It could have been seconds, or hours.

Finally, the slight cock of South’s head broke the illusion. Connie knew the tilt; someone was speaking to South, inside her helmet.

“Negative,” South said, her gaze never leaving Connie. “There’s nothing here. Coming back your way.”

Silence fell back over the hall, thick and smothering. South stared at Connie for another long five seconds that may as well have been an eternity—

Then she turned back the way she came and disappeared out of sight.

Connie kept staring at the empty space left behind, only snapping out of the daze when a hand grasped her arm.

CT pivoted on her heel and went to slam her fist into her assailant’s face— only to miss wildly as Needles dodged the strike, her fist sailing past him.

“It’s me, Connie. It’s me,” he said, his other hand finding her other arm.

All of the fight fell out of her.

“Come on,” he said. “Come with me.”

Right. They had to leave. They had to get out of there because South, and probably North with Theta, were there.

CT shrugged off his hands and jerked her head towards the motor pool. They were in a Warthog, travelling along the underground roadway to the nearby airfield, in under a minute.

“They didn’t see us and Rat locked down and wiped the system where appropriate, so I think we’re good to move onto our next planned location,” Needles said, once they were in the back of a Pelican and on the way to the _Charon._

CT shifted in her seat. Needles looked at her.

“They didn’t _see_ you, right, Connie?” he said, with the tone of a man who would know if she lied.

It took her a full minute to find the words.

“South saw me,” she said, flexing her hands. “But she didn’t tell North that she did. He asked. She said she found nothing.”

“Which means…?” Needles prompted.

“I don’t know, Needles. I don’t— I don’t know what it means!” she said, dropping her head into her hands. “Just— change location, if you’re worried. I don’t care. I need— I need—”

Rat sat down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. CT leaned against them and breathed deeply.

“Go make plans,” Rat said, simply. “Go.”

Needles had learned. He left without another word.

CT pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes to watch the lights dance and tried not to think of purple and green armour, so close and yet too far to reach.

“Is it bad that I almost wish she’d killed me? Or at least turned me in?”

Rat’s head shot up. They’d been sitting in silence in what passed for a rec room on the _Charon_ , as Needles handled things up on the bridge. CT hadn’t said a word since the Pelican, hours before, focused only on the sharp edges of the broken shrike’s tail digging into her palm and the thought of the other half of the whole.

Where was it, now? Still in its makeshift nest? On South’s bedside table? Thrown away?

“Uh, _yes_. That’s called suicidal ideation and is generally a bad thing,” Rat said, with a genuine level of concern and seriousness not often found in their voice.

“No, not— not like that,” CT said, shaking her head. She squeezed the tail. “It’s not that I want to die, it’s… I don’t know. If she’d turned me in, I’d know she hated me. But she didn’t, she let me go. And— I don’t know what that _means_.”

“Oh,” Rat said. The response didn’t stop them shuffling a little closer and resting a hand on hers, though, and neither did CT.

“Only, it gives me illusions that there’s something to go back to, when I _know_ there isn’t. I burned that bridge. I can never go back, and she _must_ hate me, but— for all people think, Natasha isn’t an inherently violent person. She loves and feels so _deeply_ that her emotions erupt from her and… I can only imagine she's at war, inside, over what I did. To not try to reach me, but also to let me go with the same breath.”

Silence hung in the air. Rat rubbed the back of her hand.

“Y’know, sometimes I think you’re a little bit too much of an emotional sponge, Con,” they said, eventually. “You going to be okay?”

“I’ll… survive. Like I’ve already been doing. This just… might set me back a little, coming to terms with it all.”

“Totally. Totally get that.”

CT sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to drop all of this feelings stuff at your feet, you’re just…”

“I’m not Needles, for one. God, can you imagine? Fucking awful. What I am,” Rat said, bumping her with their shoulder, “is someone who gets it. You feel all the shit you’ve gotta feel. This is messy.”

“The funny thing is, if he’d understand anything I’ve been feeling lately, it’d be this,” CT said, bumping back. “Burning bridges you can’t rebuild, and all that.”

“Yeah, maybe, but he’s also a little bitch.”

“Thank you, Rat,” Needles said, as he walked in. “Just what I like to hear when I enter a room.”

Rat shrugged. “You’re used to it.”

“What’s the plan?” CT asked.

Needles sighed. “We’re skipping a stop, just in case. After that… we continue as planned, for now.”

CT rubbed her face. “How much longer do we have to do this? When does this _end?_ We’ve been on the move for months, when are we going to stop moving and _go_ to someone? _Do_ something?”

“I don’t know,” Needles said, folding his arms. Before CT could say anything else, he continued, “When we get out of slipspace, I’m going to start trying to organise a… centralisation, of our resources, so we can make a move. It won’t be immediate, but…”

He shrugged.

“But it’s the best you can do when your boss doesn’t even know that I’m here, huh?” CT said, setting him with a look. He sighed, but he didn’t answer.

“I promise you, Connie, we’ll work this out. This won’t be forever.”

CT wanted to believe him, she did. Doing so was just easier said than done.

Sleep didn’t come easily to her, that jump.

The pod was uncomfortable in every way. The bed, the lights, the space—it had never been easy to relax in there, it had never become home. There _was_ no home anymore, not for CT. Resol was long gone, lightyears and lightyears away in an unknown direction and the _Invention_ was now a looming threat, rather than whatever approximation of a home it had become.

The _Charon_ wasn’t home. The bases and stations they passed through weren’t home.

Where would she go, when this was all over? Would there be anywhere _left_ to go to, or would the war that still raged around them stamp out the smouldering remains of humanity before they even had the chance to tell a soul?

Would any of this matter, by the time they found the channels they needed to travel down?

CT sighed. Sat on the floor of Pod 180 with her helmet in her lap, she sighed and she tried not to think about the existential questions that plagued her. It would do her no good. Once she entertained one question, it opened the floodgates for the rest—why was she doing this? Was it worth it? Would she have done it, if it had stopped at the Triplets?

A thousand questions she’d asked herself and answered before, but had never truly satisfied.

Not that the alternative thoughts were any better.

“Hey Obol. What time is it?” she asked the air.

The pod’s lights dimmed. “ _In ship time, it is 0300 hours._ ”

“Thank you.”

“ _You have not slept in over forty-eight hours, Connie. I must advise you to try and rest,_ ” Obol answered. “ _That is an unhealthy amount of time to be awake._ ”

“I will soon, Obol,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I just… I just need to look at a few things.”

She slid the helmet onto her head and navigated her HUD to find her long abandoned communication channels, hidden beneath the active chats with Needles and Rat.

The last time she’d looked at them was before they were deployed into the scrapyard. Only one channel had new messages, sent just before she’d drifted out of range and never reconnected to the Freelancer frequencies.

SD//: <hey, where are you?>

SD//: <this isn’t funny, mischief. did your pack malfunction?>

SD//: <mischief?>

Connie inhaled sharply and tore the helmet away like it was suffocating her.

“ _Do you require medical assistance?_ ”

“No. No, Obol, I’m fine. I’m— I’m going to sleep. You can stop monitoring me now, I know Needles or Rat likely has you doing it but…”

“ _This is not under their orders. However, if you would like me to cease monitoring, I will leave._ ”

“Please, Obol.”

“ _Very well._ ”

There was no sound when he pulled away, just the undisturbed silence he left behind. Connie sat in it, sank into it, until she mustered the will to place the helmet back on her head.

CT//: <I love you. I’m sorry.>

<No access to this channel. Check your network connection and try again.>


	25. The Bitter End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Covert Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/c144b4500a5eaabf2acc6dc156cc8af8/eb4e9b832757cd9b-34/s640x960/b8fadf520a277abd86573fa09011189d3482aa88.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro

“We’re ready.”

CT ejected the drive from the terminal she stood in front of and tucked it into her ammo compartment. Her duffel bag had already been loaded into an Albatross with crates full of equipment, ready to leave for Longshore Shipyards. Everything of value in their second-to-last stop on their journey through the galaxy had been packed up. There was nothing left to do but leave.

“Do you remember the plan?” Needles asked, as she turned to face him.

Leaning back against the terminal, she nodded. “Four transports. The Albatross leads and Rat rides shotgun. After we get confirmation they touched down, the first Falcon will go ahead. After that, it’s our turn. Then, one more ship will follow to disguise my arrival.”

“Good. We don’t know if they’ve found us, but we can prepare as if they have,” Needles said, a rhetoric she’d heard from him tens of times in the last two weeks.

Moving all of their resources to one location was bound to have attracted attention. Freelancer finding them seemed less like a hypothetical scenario and more like an inevitability. There was still no concrete plan as to where the ‘Insurrectionist’ forces would go after they arrived, but Needles seemed confident that he’d figure it out once he had his whole team together again.

CT wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t even sure that they’d have time to try.

But where else was she supposed to go, what else could she do?

Rat wrapped her in a hug tight enough to squeeze the air from her lungs and then waved as the Albatross’s ramps closed behind them, its engines bursting into life. CT waved back for a little too long after it had taken off.

She’d see them again at the shipyards, she knew that, but the journey would put them further apart than they’d been in months. It was… strange.

Waiting for news of their landing was nerve-wracking.

“ _This is Pilot 209er, we have touched down at our designated LZ. I repeat, we have—_ ”

“ _—we fucking made it, safe and sound, not a dicklancer in sight!_ ” Rat interrupted, the sigh of the pilot audible behind them. CT bit back a smile. “ _Send Buddy and his little crew of assholes over. See you soon. I’m going to go bother Girlie._ ”

Needles shook his head, but CT could see the smile tugging at the corner of his lips too. “Copy that, Rat. See you soon.”

The first Falcon took off a few minutes later. CT watched it until it was a distant blip on the horizon.

“Are you okay, Connie?” Needles asked. He rested a hand on her shoulder and though she didn’t shrug it away, she didn’t lean into it either.

“About as okay as I can be in this situation,” she said. Needles sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a better answer than that.”

“No, I get it. I just wish…” he trailed off. “I don’t know. I wish things were better. Easier.”

“Believe me,” CT said, patting his hand, “so do I.”

The wait wasn’t as torturous the second time around.

“ _We’ve touched down,_ ” Buddy said, the sound of the Falcon’s blades in the background. “ _You’re in the clear._ ”

Needles looked at CT. “Copy that, we’ll be there soon,” he said, jerking his head towards their Falcon.

CT clambered up into the forward-facing rear seat of the ship and met Needles’ eye through their visors as he slipped into the chair opposite her. Above them, the Falcon’s rotors began to spin. From there on, they’d have to rely on radios to hear each other talking.

“You don’t have to worry about the others,” Needles said, a few minutes into the trip. CT cocked her head. “Girlie, Demo… the rest of them. You don’t have to worry about them.”

“I’m not,” CT said. “I can handle them being distrustful of me. I can see why they are. I don’t need them to like me to do what I have to do.”

“I know, but…”

“But nothing, Needles. If they decide they don’t hate me anymore, then that’d be nice, but… it doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Needles expression was hidden behind his visor, but CT could almost feel the frown on his face.

“I have you and Rat. That’s all I need,” she said. The feeling of a frown went away.

The ‘others’ would have more to worry about than she would, of that she was sure. Not from her—she didn’t care to start petty fights over something that simply didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things—but from the Freelancers, whenever they came.

(And she’d learned, by then, that it was a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’.)

She had given Needles and Rat everything she had on the Freelancers after the first attack. They knew their tactics, they knew their units, they knew their weaknesses. She had given them everything they needed to stand a fighting chance. The outcome of any encounter was down to them, now.

Needles had improved in many ways, but she knew he’d never let her fight if he could help it. Not that she really wanted to in the first place.

Beneath them, the water turned from clear to green-tinted to filthy brown. Flashes of fish became floating pieces of trash interspersed with reflective pools of runoff fuel and other grime that clung to the surface of the water. The artificial colours of discarded plastics stood stark against the backdrop of the dirty ocean. CT watched them drift off in new directions as they passed over, disturbed by the blades beating air down upon the surface.

As they came up on the shipyards, her eye caught on a flash of stationary white and blue near the rocks a little way out from land. When she looked again, the blue was gone and the white appeared to be a seagull, perched on something in the water.

CT frowned.

“This place has ground-to-air defences, right?” she asked, looking back at Needles.

“Minimal, but yes. We also have eyes in every direction,” Needles answered. “Why?”

“Just checking,” CT said, as the Falcon began to descend.

Needles stood up before they’d even come to a stop, beckoning for CT to follow. He dropped onto the concrete beneath them with a thud and offered her a hand that she declined in favour of jumping down on her own.

Up ahead, she saw Demo, Girlie, and Sleeves watching her, talking, and she sighed. This was going to be a long day.

“Come on,” Needles said. “Rat’ll be waiting for us.”

CT followed just behind him, taking in the industrial structure that lay in front of her. Corrugated metal walls, concrete floors, and shipping containers being used to create cover, all of it beneath a thin layer of hanging smog, made for a hostile environment.

But it didn’t explain the way the hair on the back of her neck raised as they crossed an open area of the yard.

She slowed down until she came to a stop, following the feeling of being watched to the same rocks she’d seen from the Falcon. Sunlight bounced off the water and reflected off the lens of a sniper rifle’s scope—or, that’s what she thought she saw. She blinked and suddenly, the glint was gone.

Was the patch of white left behind in the same space a reflection, or a helmet?

Her heart stopped. It _looked_ like a helmet. Was she just seeing things?

“What is it?” Needles asked.

CT forced herself to look away. “It’s nothing,” she told him and herself, all at once, “come on.”

They _would_ come, she knew that, but this soon? She _had_ to be seeing things.

Right?

She hung at Needles’ heel while he greeted his teammates—bro-hugged Demo, got punched in the arm by Girlie, shared a meaningful nod with Sleeves. Snipes’ method of welcoming them was to make a pinpoint precision shot over CT’s shoulder to burst an empty spray-paint can sitting on a crate between the Chain Twins.

CT jumped and glared back over her shoulder, as the others snickered.

“Nice shot, Snipes!” Girlie called, waving one of those custom knives of hers.

“They like to say hi, in their own way,” Needles said, by way of apology. CT crossed her arms. “Really, they do that whenever they’re too far to say hello to someone’s face.”

_Right by their head?_ she wanted to say, but didn’t. No need to rock the boat any more than her presence already had.

“I’m going to go ahead and find Rat,” she said instead. “You do whatever you need to do out here.”

She left before Needles could say a word to stop her, ignoring the looks that bore into her spine as she went. Understanding their distrust didn’t mean she had to tolerate their obnoxious way of showing it for any longer than she had to.

She realised her mistake a few seconds later, when she remembered she didn’t know the layout of the base yet.

“Hey, Rat? Can you send me a floorplan or something? I… don’t know where you are.”

“ _There you are! How long did you last outside with the rabid animals I call my friends?_ ” Rat said. A map appeared on CT’s HUD by the end of their sentence.

“About a minute. Snipes decided to send a bullet whizzing past my head, so, I’m not taking the chance they try it again and miss directly into my skull,” she replied.

“ _Oh, they wouldn’t do that. They never miss._ ”

“Reassuring.”

She found Rat in the base’s security hub, spinning around on a swivel chair. Leaning against the doorframe, CT folded her arms and cocked her head at them.

“You couldn’t have stayed up top until I got here to be a buffer?” she asked.

Rat held their arms open. CT shook her head but came over and hugged them, anyway, then plucked them up from the seat and sat down herself, Rat on her lap.

“Oh, I like this,” Rat said. “And I _could_ have, but I got bored.”

“Of course you did,” CT said.

The security hub consisted of rows of screens showing every camera feed in the complex—above ground and below it. Combined with the map on her HUD, CT finally began to understand the scope of the facility they’d come to; it wasn’t just the shipyards on the surface, it was a whole underground complex with multi-storey racks of storage and a heavily fortified bunker.

This was the kind of place you stood a final stand.

CT wrapped their arms around Rat’s waist a little tighter.

“Do any of these cameras point out towards the water, the way we came in?” she asked, scanning over the tiny square feeds.

“Yeah, duh. Why?” Rat said. With a press of a button, they centred a small collection of cameras that, together, created a good view of the waterfront.

CT scanned the images until she found one pointing towards the rocks she had seen, and squinted. There was no white patch in the water. From this angle, the light didn’t catch on the surface in the same way. Had it been just a shimmer, after all? Or had whoever had been there just moved on?

“No reason, really, just…” CT sighed. “It feels like we’re kind of out in the open, here, is all. My paranoia is spiking, making me… see things that probably aren’t there. It’s nothing new.”

Rat turned in her lap and pulled off their helmet to stare at her.

“That’s concerning, you know that, right? Paranoia? Seeing things? Are you okay, Con?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, it’s…” Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut. “You know I don’t sleep particularly well. And towards the end, there, on the _Invention…_ I _had_ to be paranoid. Shaking that instinct is the hard part. Paranoia doesn’t feel like just paranoia when you actually have something to watch out for.”

Rat frowned. “I _guess_ , but… how come you didn’t say something before now?”

CT cocked her head at them.

They sighed. “Needles.”

“He’d worry. Or overanalyse _my_ worries. I thought I saw something out there, for example, and if I told him… he’d have blown it out of proportion, and we’d have been gone again. Off somewhere else.”

She didn’t want to have to up-sticks and leave again under an hour after they’d arrived based on what was probably nothing. That would have been a new record, one she wasn’t eager to achieve.

“Alright, if you say so,” Rat said, though they didn’t sound convinced. “You got the data? We should probably get to making a local back-up.”

“Yeah,” CT said, pulling it out, “I do.”

The process wasn’t labour-intensive. Once the drive was inserted and the download was initiated, CT and Rat could do nothing but monitor it and watch the cameras. Rat seemed to enjoy that. They would point out weird little interactions taking place where people didn’t think the cameras would find them, like—

“—those guys over there, look, he’s asking him to check out a rash—”

—and—

“—that lady just broke the railing and is trying to pretend she didn’t—”

—which were, admittedly, pretty funny. CT laughed with them and followed their finger as they pointed out new things on the feeds, but her mind was drifting.

If that _was_ Wyoming—because, if it was anyone, it would be him—then he saw her, he knew she was here. He would have reported that information back to Command without a second’s hesitation and the Director would have commenced immediate preparations for a full-scale assault on the shipyards.

How long did they have, if what she’d seen was real?

How many more minutes until the full might of Project Freelancer came down upon them?

CT jumped out of her skin as Needles clapped a hand onto both of their shoulders. “How are things going down here?”

“We’re idiot-watching,” Rat said cheerfully. “The local back-up is basically done. Connie might be losing her mind, but that’s nothing new.”

CT gave them a look. Needles cocked his head.

“I just have a bad feeling, that’s all,” CT said, pulling Rat’s mask up over their eyes. They huffed. “How did things go up top?”

The deflection was obvious, but other than staring at her for a moment longer in silence, Needles let it slide.

“No one’s particularly happy about having to stick their necks out to help protect you, but luckily they listen to me and this is one area where being Keaton’s sibling affords you benefits, instead of my angst-ing,” he said, the faint lilt of a smile in his voice. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that. We just need to hang around here long enough to make a plan, after all.”

CT’s gut and throat began to play tug of war with her heart.

“Do we have any basis for a plan?” she asked, when she wrestled her voice away from the fight.

“Well, the big boss just got appointed to some fancy oversight subcommittee, but I’d like us to really have all our ducks in a row, so to speak, before we approach anything like that,” Needles shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. It doesn’t have to be today.”

_But what if it does?_ CT thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say. What if she was wrong? What if she uprooted everyone for nothing?

She’s caused enough damage already.

“Oversight subcommittee?” she asked. “Is he the head of that, or…?”

“Assistant to the chairperson.” He folded his arms. “It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, to me. I want to get a read on how they operate, get everything you have ready… then we can think about talking to them. Until then, we keep you safe and look for alternate avenues. What about that network of yours? Where we found you?”

“They’re all dead, Needles,” CT said frankly, arms wrapping a little tighter around Rat. “Rat being alive was a fluke. The fact you were UNSC-affiliated was a _miracle._ We won’t find anything there that we don’t already have.”

“Had to ask,” Needles said. No, no he didn’t.

He wasn’t telling her something, she knew his tells by now—the uneven line of his shoulders, the way he wouldn’t quite look at her. The information she had about his employer was limited, but so were her options. Getting access to authorities such as the UNSC Judge Advocate General was harder than she had expected; their avenues for communication were limited and the level of scrutiny intense. Combine that with the increasingly unclear nature of Needles’ boss’s intentions and…

Maybe she should have asked more questions, pushed harder; Needles’ connection to Keaton would never have allowed him to abandon her, after all, no matter how nosy she got.

Hindsight, and all that.

Maybe she could push a little now. “Do you have any reason why the subcommittee would be any more of a nightmare than any other route we’ve tried? Is someone on the committee untrustworthy?”

Needles shifted. “I don’t know, that’s kind of the problem.”

“Unfamiliar with the other members?”

“Something like that.”

CT frowned. Needles looked at the screens instead of her.

“Run me through your data again,” he said, nodding towards the few screens not displaying cameras. “I want to know it as well as you and Rat do.”

“Alright,” CT said. Tipping Rat gently off her lap, she stood up and pulled up the file directory.

That was when the gunfire and explosions started.

“What the—?!” Needles exclaimed, jumping back as Rat elbowed him out of the way and pulled up the appropriate cameras. “What’s going on up there?!”

Rat huffed. “I’m _looking_ , you id— holy shit where did that Pelican come from?! There was no freaking Pelican on the thermals! Shit, the fucking _Freelancers_ —”

CT froze.

They were here.

They were actually _here_.

Her eyes widened with abject horror, but the jolt of adrenaline she expected didn’t come. Only a feeling of cold, dawning terror and the realisation that she should have said _something_ , _anything_ —

She wasn’t seeing things. She wasn’t just _paranoid_.

_Fuck._ It wasn’t paranoia when you had something to be paranoid _about!_

“I didn’t think they’d find me so quickly,” she said and it wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth either and she’d spent so much of her last two years doing _that_ , lying but not lying and—

“It was only a matter of time,” Needles said, line of his shoulders now tight and his voice thick with frustration and a determination that didn’t reassure CT at all. “Let’s deal with this.”

He pressed a button on the terminal.

“All hands top side!” he ordered. “We are under attack! This is _not_ a drill! Let’s go, people! _Move!_ ”

A chorus of affirmatives came back.

CT’s stomach turned.

“Alright, we need to move too,” Needles said, stepping around Rat and pushing them back up to the terminal. “Connie, you’re with me. We’re going to go get the escape ship prepared. Rat, you stay here, wipe the system, don’t leave _anything_ for them to find. Get on the radio and tell the twins to meet us on the next level down.”

“Got it,” Rat said with a firm nod. Dragging CT down into a quick, tight hug, they shoved the data drive into her hand and her towards Needles, even as she looked between them, lost. “Go, go on. I’ll follow when shit’s wiped and locked down. There’s too much stuff here for me to just leave, so go on.”

“But—” Connie protested, fingers curling around the drive. They couldn’t split up, right? Not now, not when—

“No buts, _go,_ ” Rat insisted, pushing her again. “Now. They want _you_ , remember? Get your ass in that fucking bunker.”

CT swallowed and, though everything in her _screamed_ at her not to leave, she said: “Okay. Hurry, though, alright?”

“Yeah yeah, I’ll be quick as I can, _go._ ”

Needles beckoned her and CT followed him, casting a look back over her shoulder at Rat. They pulled the swivel chair back up to the terminal and crouched it in, their ridiculously long braid falling over the back. On the screens, the system lockdown began.

Then the door shut behind them.

“I should have seen this coming. Something felt off, I should have _known_ ,” Needles said, stalking ahead. CT had to jog a little to catch up. “I could _feel_ it. You could too, couldn’t you? Your bad feeling? That’s why you were acting weird outside.”

He led her quickly down a set of stairs hidden behind closed doors.

“I— I thought I saw something, out in the water—Wyoming, I think it was Wyoming, so warn the others that his unit’s in play—but I… I wasn’t sure,” CT admitted, guilt swirling in her gut. She should have said something _sooner_. “I knew they’d find us again eventually, but I didn’t think it would be now.”

“We made too much noise,” Needles said through gritted teeth, his fists clenched. “God _dammit._ ”

The Chain Twins met them as instructed and fell into position behind them, flanking either side of the hall. Needles was half-way through asking them for a status update on the people above ground when a tremendous _CRASH_ came from above them and the radios answered for them.

“ _Drop pod with that Spartan brute just dropped in!_ ” Girlie hissed, the sound of falling debris in the background.

Maine. Maine was in the field again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Needles hissed under his breath, breaking into a yell as he responded: “Do _not_ stay up there longer than you need to! Take ‘em down and then _get down here!_ ”

There was a beat. “ _Don’t wait up._ ”

Needles cursed. “Girlie, _no—!_ ”

The radio cut off. Needles flexed his fists.

CT almost reached out to touch his arm, but he moved before she could.

“Come on,” he said, jerking his head forward. “Down a couple more levels. We’re almost there.”

Hydraulic arms whirred around above them as they descended, picking up crates and stashing them in row upon row of storage shelves as tall as a tower block. The complex was even bigger than it seemed on the maps or the cameras, but it wasn’t a maze. Once someone found the right path down, they’d be upon them.

CT’s heart pounded in her ears. One wrong move, _one_ wrong move—

The hair on the back of her neck raised.

Needles held up a hand and they stopped dead. CT turned with him, drawing her pistols and scanning the dimly-lit hallway behind them for any sign of what had set off not just her own sense of unease, but Needles’ uncanny sense for something out of place.

When he grabbed the tomahawk from his back, she knew he’d seen something she hadn’t.

The tomahawk unfurled with a dexterity that she would have admired any other day and then arced across the room _perfectly_ with a sharp, “Catch!” to impact a figure CT hadn’t even known was there until it fell.

Bright blue.

Florida.

“Surprise,” Needles said. He sounded… too satisfied. CT stared at the blue heap at the floor and she _tried_ , but couldn’t muster any such satisfaction, any such relief. The strike was impressive, yes, but…

If Florida was down here, before them? Then Wyoming probably was, too.

And if they were there, the others would find them soon enough.

Another countdown started ticking in the back of CT’s mind.

“We’ve got company! Cut ‘em down!” Needles ordered.

Unsettling laughter echoed around the empty room, undercut by the mechanical rattling of the chain guns starting up and filling the air with gunfire. Aimed at the platform directly opposite where Florida had stood, the bullets hit the wall behind it, but didn’t impact anyone.

CT frowned. Then where was…?

They lowered the barrels. Needles stepped forward, eyes squarely ahead.

“Hold this position,” he said. The Chain Twins nodded in sync.

He still felt something.

A figure of white sheen jumped out from behind the pillar beneath the platform and two sniper shots broke the air. Needles cursed and fell back, CT lurched forward to help— but the shots didn’t land, they ricocheted off the twins’ gun guards instead.

They recovered quickly, but Wyoming darted to the side.

“Move down!” Needles barked, scrambling to his feet. He grabbed CT’s arm, the sudden pressure sending a jolt through her nerves, and tugged, urgently. “Come on, we need to move.”

CT stared down towards the exit, one way in and one way out, all too easy for the others to reach—

Then followed.

Every other sound was drowned out by the cacophony of the twins’ continuous fire and that too died behind the heavy door of the bunker.

Except they could still hear gunfire, clear as day. What the hell was—

“What the—” Needles started, echoing her thoughts, only to be cut off by a burst of static from their radios.

In the bottom corner of their HUDs, Rat’s comm. indicator flashed.

“ _Got a couple of assholes about to breach the doors,”_ Rat said, panting with— exertion? Pain? “ _Was about to leave, opened the damn things, then— well,_ ” they hissed, “ _nevermind that. I’m initiating a total system wipe. Everything outside that bunker will be deactivated and deleted. You better be down there or it’s going to lock you out._ ”

CT’s heart settled firmly in her stomach.

“We— we just arrived,” she said, looking at the now locked door as her heart sank deeper and deeper. “Rat, do you have another way out of there?”

A pained, humourless laugh unlike anything CT had ever heard from Rat came over the radio.

“ _Negative on that. No other exit. Not even a frickin’ vent I can fit in. This is— well. Yeah. The purple bastards outside have me pinned._ ”

No. No, no, _no—_

“Rat, no, don’t you _dare_ say that!” CT said—no, _begged._ Blood rushing in her ears, she _begged_. “You need to— there _has_ to be—”

“ _Get her out of there, Santos, you damn idiot! You get her out of there or I swear to fucking god I’ll— SHIT!_ ”

Gunfire consumed the feed.

The next thing they heard was a gasp and a thud.

“ _Target down. We got the—_ ” North’s voice said, all soldier-like professionalism.

CT scrambled to cut off the radio before she could hear the same from South, too.

Silence choked the bunker. Needles’ shoulders were shaking. CT’s eyes and throat burned with tears and bile.

Stiff with a cold, _burning_ rage, Needles turned and started hitting buttons on the console.

“We need to get to the escape vehicle,” CT choked out.

Needles didn’t look at her.

“I’m not leaving them!” he snapped, jabbing buttons until two turrets descended from the ceiling. Stubborn as always, even now, even when—

“You don’t understand! They want _me!_ They don’t care about the rest of you! I know too much, if I go, they’ll follow!” CT said, almost pleading. She swallowed bile and let a single tear fall before she clenched her eyes shut and forced them back. “ _Please_ , Rat said—”

Needles snapped, “I heard what Rat said!”

“Then _listen!_ We need to go, we need to get _out_ of—”

Needles slammed his fists against the controls. CT stopped talking.

“We need to _wait_ for them. For _all_ of them!” he said, fists uncurling and his fingers flexing. He connected to the TEAMCOM. “Arianna?” Pause. “Taiko?” Pause. “Ammi? Devan? Come on, _someone—_ ”

Outside, there erupted a tremendous crash. Loud enough to breach the thick metal door.

Then the power went out. The countdown grew louder.

“Damn it!” Needles shouted.

“We need to _go!”_ CT said. York had cut the power, after that came—

Needles grabbed a tomahawk from his back. “I already told you, I can’t _leave_ them!”

“Most of them are already dead!” The words fell off her tongue like a ten-tonne weight and her stomach twisted, again, fresh bile rising in her throat. They were all dead. Needles friends, her brother’s friends. _Rat._ Fuck, _Rat—_ and it was all her fault, this was all _her fault._ “Besides, if we leave, they have no reason to be here!”

Needles stared at the door, tomahawk in hand.

CT grabbed his arm. “ _Please,_ let’s just go while we still can.”

Needles hissed. “Connie, come _on_ —!”

“You _promised_ me. You said you were going to protect me, right?” she said, pleading with the overprotective side of him that had been so _annoying_ before. “I have all the information we need; I have my _armour_. Can’t we take this to your boss on his subcommittee and—”

Needles jerked his arm away, put the axe down. “And _what_ Connie?!”

CT threw up her hands. “I don’t know! Show them what’s happening?! That’s the point of all this! If we can get to them, maybe they’ll help us. _Protect_ us! No one else has to die today, Needles!”

“It’s not that simple!” he retorted, like she didn’t know that, like she hadn’t seen the signs in every word he’d said since they got here that they were out of options, that something was wrong.

“What other choice do we have?” she said, grabbing him again. She’d drag him, if she had to. “Come on, we don’t have much time!”

The doors opened.

“Actually, you don’t have _any_ time.”

The voice sent a chill down CT’s spine.

She pivoted to face them. “Carolina! And—”

Texas. A pillar of black, tinted red by the emergency lights above them. For a moment, just a _solitary_ moment, CT dared to hope—the dog tags. The dog tags in Texas’ locker. Maybe she’d found them. Maybe she’d seen them. Maybe, just _maybe_ , this encounter wouldn’t go the way that the Director hoped it would. Maybe, just fucking _maybe_ , the tables would _finally_ turn in her favour.

But only for a moment. Because Texas didn’t drop her gun when the doors shut.

The chill became an all-consuming, cold-burning rage of her own.

“— _you,_ ” she all but hissed.

Tick, tick, tick. Her heartbeat matched the countdown.

Three pistols were aimed at her.

The silence strung up between them was balanced on the tension of who would make the first move. One quick motion, one hand going for a weapon, and those three pistols would fire—it would be over in seconds.

CT had to buy them time, and—

And she had to try. She had to _try._

“CT, you have something that belongs to Project Freelancer,” Texas said, stepping forward. “And you _know_ how the Director hates to share.”

“You two are fools,” CT said, matching Texas’s motion. The pistols were all trained on her head. “The Director is playing you; don’t you see it?”

“CT, stop it! We know you’ve been feeding intel to the resistance for _months_ ,” Carolina said, head tilted to cast her visor in shadow. The weight of her gaze would have pinned CT in place, once upon a time.

Needles _laughed_. “Is that who he told you we are?”

CT stood her ground. “They’re not the enemy, Carolina! We’re the ones working outside the rules, _not_ them.”

Even as she said it, she wondered how it sounded. Carolina had once been so quick to assume that CT would speak in favour of the Insurrection and she had not been shy about her experience in response. What would Carolina see, here? Evidence that she’d caught CT in a lie, all that time ago? Proof that CT was an Insurrectionist all along, who’d let the mask slip only to quickly put it back on when Carolina noticed?

“You don’t know what the Director’s done. He’s broken major laws; when this war ends, we’re _all_ gonna have to pay for his crimes.” CT shifted. Her gaze flicked between the two women ahead of her. The Director’s daughter and the AI he thought was his dead wife reincarnate. “Maybe some of us are already paying for them.”

It didn’t have to be like this. If Texas had only seen the _damn dog tags_ , then— then—

Texas dropped one arm to aim a single pistol directly at CT’s skull, arm steady and sure. “You need to stop talking, CT!”

“No!” CT snapped back. She pointed at Texas, stared into her visor to meet the artificial eyes that lay behind it. “I know what you are, Tex. And I won’t take orders from a shadow.”

“ _What_ did you just call me?” Texas snapped.

Her gun arm fell, but Carolina’s replaced it.

“You’re coming with us, CT, this is your _last chance_ ,” Carolina said and oh, this time, something in _her_ voice was pleading. A warning. She meant it; one more chance to come quietly, one more chance to walk out of this and live another day, maybe two. A few months in a cell, if she got really lucky.

That wasn’t an option.

This had all started because CT hoped to escape that fate. She wouldn’t end it there.

“No. I’m not going _anywhere_ with you,” she said, standing her ground despite the way her hands trembled, just slightly. _Tick, tick, tick._

In the corner of her eye, she saw Needles moving backwards, one slow step at a time.

“Actually, we don’t need you,” Texas said, low and dangerous. “We just need your armour.”

CT prepped her unit and ducked.

The bullet whizzed over her head, punctuated by a sharp, “ _NO!_ ” from beside her. The hologram flickered and died and CT bolted forwards, taking momentary satisfaction in the confusion written into every line of Tex’s dark form before she was behind her.

Arm wrenched back, bent up against it at an angle that would dislocate any human’s shoulder, CT pinned Tex’s hand to her spine with a knife through the palm. It knocked Texas off balance and CT _shoved_ her forward, right into Needles’ tomahawk blade.

She had never seen Texas hit the ground like she did then.

Carolina ducked behind a crate as his second axe flew through the air and embedded itself into the edge of it, narrowly missing her. A flash of teal appeared around the edge; a bullet cut through the air but missed its mark.

CT threw herself towards it, swiped wide at Carolina’s gut with her knife, and forced her back. Carolina’s arm raised, gun level with her head and CT dropped a hologram, ducking below the shot. Behind her, the hologram glitched and failed.

Carolina did a double-take and CT wrapped her knife around her wrist and _threw_ the pistol away and—

Electricity coursed across her chestplate. CT gasped, pitching back— and then a foot slammed into her gut.

CT skidded across the ground and scrambled to her feet, adrenaline flooding her system. Where was—

Texas threw Needles over her head and he slammed into the ground on his neck, then took a kick to the face. CT cursed. He wouldn’t stand a chance against Texas one-on-one, she needed to—

Carolina was in front of her, the baton in her hand sparking as CT blocked it with her knife. For every opening CT saw, Carolina found a way to block it. Swipe, stab, slash— sparks flashing in her face, CT flinched and stumbled, was struck by the baton and given only milliseconds to recover, to block another strike, another shower of sparks.

She swung her blade wide and Carolina ducked. CT thrust towards another opening, but her blade caught on the reinforced length of the baton until Carolina shouldered her arm away and CT’s chest lit up with electricity again, then _again._

CT stumbled and spat out another hologram, running at Carolina with its blade raised to strike. Distracted, Carolina didn’t see the kick coming until it was too late, and CT’s foot collided with her chest plate. The force launched her back— right into a dizzied Needles.

_Shit. Shit!_

Texas never let up. Needles took hit after hit and he tripped over his own feet, almost sending himself sprawling onto the ground with Texas hovering above him, ready to finish him.

_Not happening._ No one else, not today— not for _her_.

CT forced herself between them and threw Needles _back_ , a firm hand against his chest and a wide sweep of her knife through the air in front of her that put distance between them. Texas and Carolina jumped back, skidded to a stop a couple of feet away.

And then they ran back in and CT had to dodge Texas’s fist and the swing of Carolina’s baton in quick succession, the dark figure of Texas cut out of view by the bright aqua of Carolina pushing her way between them. Separating the fights, forcing CT to focus on Carolina whilst Texas went for Needles _again_.

He held her attention for seconds, until she knocked him away with a kick that she flung back, catching CT in the wrist. Carolina and Texas were _close_ , too close, surrounding her, and CT made another clumsy swipe to force them away—but Carolina just _ducked_.

Blade to baton, CT could only watch as Needles took more hits.

Everything moved so quickly. One second, she was fighting Carolina, the next, Carolina had spun out of the way and CT had to aim to tear open Texas’s abdomen to get her to back off. The next, she had spun on her heel right into the business end of Carolina’s baton and then she ducked, instinctively throwing out and _wasting_ a hologram that went through Carolina as she kicked her in the face and torso.

_Useless,_ completely _useless_ —

The room spun. Four holograms. Four _fucking_ holograms—

Needles was there; he pulled Carolina’s ire, and CT became vaguely aware that Texas was dragging herself to her feet behind him. A sharp kick to his faceplate sent him back into Texas and another punch _flung_ him across the room, but she couldn’t look to see where he landed because Carolina was on her again, blade to baton, no seconds to spare.

And then electricity shocked her fingers and the knife was in the air and she caught it, somehow, adrenaline and survival instincts and luck, her last bit of luck— because then it was embedded in the ceiling by a backflip that knocked it from her grip.

CT had milliseconds to register the lack of weight in her hand before her legs were ripped from under her and Carolina was above her, and Texas was there and—

_Tick, tick, tick._

The world slowed down.

Texas had a tomahawk in her hand.

Needles was nowhere to be seen. Carolina was far to the left.

CT’s breathing was thick and ragged, and she pulled herself up as iron bit at her senses. Her head spun in circles.

The hologram unfolded from her like an outstretched wing. For a moment, CT wasn’t even sure which she was—the left, or the right.

But Texas didn’t hesitate.

She tore the tomahawk embedded in the crate loose and struck them both at once.

CT heard the hologram flicker and die before she felt the blossoming agony that tore through her gut, or the force that made her stagger back. The tomahawk’s weight felt _wrong_ and her stomach felt wet and her legs _shook_ but she stayed up, she backed up, she looked at Texas through false golden eyes and saw nothing but a blank visor over the face of a shadow.

Texas’s arm reared back and the countdown ended.


	26. Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f2a3bd7c2f94ff7e5047b56c094dd0dc/48c236d597358e6f-b0/s640x960/b2197a88fbdd474b984ded6eb66e0275cfd015f4.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro. The final chapter will be posted tomorrow, rather than next week.

CT cursed as she crumpled back against the floor. Her third attempt to pull herself to her feet since Needles had dragged her into the escape pod whilst Texas and Carolina turned their attention to each other, too distracted to stop them.

The escape pod’s medical kit was barely over a metre above her. If she could just get some purchase, pull herself up far enough, then she could get to it. Open it. Get some biofoam and—

Gritting her teeth, she pressed her weight against the wall and tried to push herself up. Back against the blood-stained metal, all of her leverage in her legs, she _pushed_ , even when her knees threatened to buckle.

Just a little further, just a little—

Turning quickly, biting back a pained cry as the motion twisted her wound, she held herself chest-first to the wall and wrenched the case open. Her hand was slick with her own blood. The latch slipped from her fingers and she struggled to get enough of a grip on the cylindrical shape of the biofoam canister to pull it out.

Forehead flush against the wall, she bit her tongue and put all her strength into _tearing_ it free.

It came loose. CT exhaled.

Even that hurt.

She rolled onto her back and prepped the canister, trembling as she gingerly lifted her hand from the open wound in her gut. The hand holding the canister shook and, coated in red, it slipped from her grip at the last second and clattered to the ground.

“Shit, no—” she gasped, instinctively pushing away from the wall to follow it and—

CT slammed face first into the ground, mouth ajar in silent agony.

The biofoam had rolled beneath one of the empty chairs, out of reach. Straining for it only made the pain worse, but she tried anyway. Fingertips clawed across the metal floor, the texture sharp and the sound piercing, but even when they brushed the edge of the canister, it only pushed it further away.

Trying to yell only led to her choking on blood. The bitter taste filled her mouth and she spat it onto the floor.

She used what energy she had left to turn onto her side, temple against the cold ground.

It was over.

A dry, humourless laugh bubbled in her throat and blood spilled over her lips. It was _over_. She was bleeding out too quickly. By the time Needles got back from the cockpit, by the time they were in the air, she’d be gone.

Fuck, _Needles._ She’s sent him away, sent him to get them out of here before the Freelancers could sabotage the launch bay. Now she was going to— going to—

She wouldn’t even get to see a friendly face one more time.

She was alone. She was going to die alone.

Oh god. She was going to _die_.

Knocking her head against the floor, Connie choked on a sob.

Everything hurt. Her torso was one bright, burning point of agony whilst her fingertips felt numb, curled against the blood-soaked plane of her stomach. The tomahawk had torn through the aging scar with almost uncanny precision, but Texas was stronger than Needles. The suit couldn’t protect her against a strike like that.

The wound in her chest ached, but buried beneath the metal of the armour, it felt almost… distant. She couldn’t touch it, feel the blood under her fingers. It was probably what was flooding her chest cavity, but she tried not to think too hard about that.

She was going to die.

Connie always thought she’d die at home— no, that wasn’t quite true. Connie always thought she’d die to the all-consuming heat of a plasma beam raining down on them from above, that she’d die in the distorted rubble of what had once _been_ home. It was a fate you came to expect, when colonies just like yours were wiped out almost every day. She had accepted it; at least if she died in a glassing, she’d be dying somewhere she knew.

She’d never intended to leave. With Keaton missing, leaving meant her mothers being alone and she didn’t want to do that to them. She _hated_ that she’d done that to them, all for _lies._ False promises she should have seen through.

Maybe, when it had started, Keaton had found them. Maybe they’d at least died together.

That was better than dying alone.

Mass had died alone. That was Connie’s fault, too.

How many people had died because of her?

Mass. Girlie, Demo, Sleeves, Snipes, the Chain Twins— _Rat._ Fuck, _Rat._

Tears dribbled down her cheeks and mingled with the blood that stained her chin. They didn’t sting. She couldn’t even taste the blood anymore. Everything felt… distant. Like the world was going dark at the edges.

Was this what life flashing before your eyes was like?

Memories of everything you did wrong, of everything you’d lost?

A thousand versions of her future had been born and died on the back of _one_ decision that became a _thousand_ decisions, made every single day, until the outcome was inevitable. She’d accepted the Project’s offer. She’d thrown herself into the jaws of a beast she could never have hoped to defeat, even from the inside, and yet it was a beast she could never have let lie, never have left alone.

She had _loved_ and she’d _lied_ and she’d _lost_ and she’d left, she’d _left_ , left behind the people she’d come to care for but had never allowed herself to _trust_ , even at the end, even when she was staring the unknown in the face. Why hadn’t she taken the _chance_? Why hadn’t she trusted them? Why had she trusted _her_ , a shadow _?_

Why did she have to do this all alone?

Why did she have to _die alone?_

There was no world where she didn’t follow this through. There was no world where she kept her head down. There was no world where she let this go by unnoticed, untouched. She knew that.

But it meant there was no world where she was happy, either. No world where she and South got to see what they’d be at the end of the war. That world could never have existed. It had been doomed from the moment Beta came into being, before they’d ever even _met._

Over before they’d begun.

A forgone conclusion.

Distantly, she heard Needles’ voice in the cockpit, but she couldn’t make out the words over the sound of her own failing breathing. Then, the world beneath her began to shake. They were leaving.

The tips of her fingers dipped into the growing pool of blood beneath her.

It didn’t hurt, anymore. Everything just felt… _cold_.

Lifting her arm took all of her remaining strength. Fumbling in her ammo compartment, she wrapped her numb fingers around the data-drive. Needles would need it. He’d need it to finish this, to— to finish what she’d started. To make this _worth it._

Footsteps reverberated across the floor. He was almost back.

If she could hold on a little longer, then— then—

Then maybe—

Maybe—

“Connie?! Connie!”

The drive fell to the floor.


	27. Project Freelancer Audio Logs; Interrogation of Agents Following Case File 01.205//Level 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter Cover Art](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f1b211bba55d09898d37b7ed2b5c3ba4/9e74a651b9602219-18/s640x960/f952c577dad2cbd966875f515368b9a462770c5b.png) by artsilon/mercysewerpyro. Here we are, at the final chapter!

_Project Freelancer audio log 01072R-2, 1166. Interrogation of Agent South Dakota following assignment detailed in Case File 01.205//Level 2._

COUNSELOR: Agent South, would you care to take a seat?

(Clattering. Something heavy hits the floor.)

SOUTH DAKOTA: No.

(Silence.)

COUNSELOR: Very well. This… debriefing, concerns the recent defection of Agent Connecticut to the Insurrection. I understand that you and Agent Connecticut were… particularly close, prior to her departure.

(SOUTH DAKOTA doesn’t reply.)

COUNSELOR: That was a question, Agent South.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Didn’t sound like one.

COUNSELOR: Were you and Agent Connecticut close? Did you spend time with her in the days immediate to her defection?

SOUTH DAKOTA: Yeah, we were fucking, is that what you dicksockets wanna hear?! I had my face between her fucking legs like two fucking days before she left! That doesn’t mean I know _shit!_

(SOUTH DAKOTA slams her hands on the table.)

(COUNSELOR coughs.)

COUNSELOR: So, Agent Connecticut did not disclose her intentions to you?

SOUTH DAKOTA: No, she fucking didn’t! She never told me _fuckshit_ about _anything_ , apparently! What kind of stupid fucking question—

(Stomping.)

COUNSELOR: We are attempting to establish a… comprehensive understanding, of Agent Connecticut’s behaviour leading up to her defection. Did she say anything that struck you as… unusual? Was there anything suspicious about her behaviour?

(Silence.)

SOUTH DAKOTA: She got all fucking nostalgic right before she— (huffs) Look, I don’t fucking know, okay? She was just _Connie_. She said all sorts of fucking shit, it didn’t _mean_ anything! It never fucking _meant_ anything!

COUNSELOR: Clearly, that is not the case.

SOUTH DAKOTA: Oh, _fuck_ you. _Fuck_ you! I don’t _know_ _shit_ about why she decided to go fucking Innie! I don’t have to fucking stand here and listen to this stupid, psychological _bullshit!_

(Beeping as fists slam against a lock.)

COUNSELOR: Agent South, please, if you would calm down and take a seat, there are more questions that I believe you can shine a… _unique_ , light on—

SOUTH DAKOTA: (interrupting) I just _said_ I don’t know _shit!_

(Sparks and cracking.)

(The door opens.)

COUNSELOR: Agent South, I have not dismiss—

SOUTH DAKOTA: (interrupting) Dismiss my fucking _ass_ , Counselor.

(SOUTH DAKOTA storms out, mumbling indistinctly.)

(Silence.)

COUNSELOR: Debriefing adjourned.

[Audio ends.]

_Project Freelancer audio log 01061R-1, 0351. Interrogation of Agent Washington following assignment detailed in Case File 01.205//Level 2._

COUNSELOR: Agent Washington. I understand that you and Agent Connecticut were… close?

WASHINGTON: We were friends, yeah.

COUNSELOR: So, you and Connecticut spent a great deal of time together, during her time at the Project?

WASHINGTON: I guess you could say that. We were bunkmates for a long time, we hung out… not so much towards the end, though. (pause) She was always busy. At least, that’s what she told me.

COUNSELOR: Would you say that Connecticut became… withdrawn?

WASHINGTON: That’s one word you could use. I didn’t think much of it at the time. She was always a workaholic, that wasn’t really anything new.

(A chair creaks.)

COUNSELOR: I see. Did any of her other behaviour strike you as… odd, in the months and weeks leading up to her defection at the scrapyard?

(Silence.)

COUNSELOR: Agent Washington?

WASHINGTON: There’s things she did and said that sound suspicious in hindsight, but at the time, no. Nothing she said made me think she was going to go Innie on us, if that’s what you’re asking.

COUNSELOR: Can you recall any specific instances?

WASHINGTON: Not really. She liked to ask questions, that was true from the day we met. I couldn’t give you any specific thing she said or did.

(COUNSELOR makes a quiet ‘hmm’ sound.)

COUNSELOR: Internals contacted you on three separate occasions to discuss the suspicious transmissions that had been leaving the _Mother of Invention_. Do you know why?

WASHINGTON: They thought I might know something. I didn’t. Are you saying I was the only one who had those meetings?

COUNSELOR: That does seem to be the case.

WASHINGTON: Huh. Weird.

(Silence. COUNSELOR clears his throat.)

COUNSELOR: Is it possible that they believed your friendship with Agent Connecticut, an agent with a history of similar actions, meant that you may have information?

WASHINGTON: I suppose so, but CT never said anything to me. I didn’t even know she had a history. We’re not supposed to talk about our pasts here, right?

COUNSELOR: Indeed.

(Fingers tap against a screen.)

COUNSELOR: That will be all, Agent Washington.

(A chair scrapes against the floor.)

WASHINGTON: Sorry that I couldn’t be of more help.

COUNSELOR: Quite the opposite, Agent Washington. You have been very helpful.

(WASHINGTON leaves.)

COUNSELOR: I do not believe that Agent Washington is telling us the whole truth.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: (distorted by a speaker) Nonsense, Counselor. Agent Washington remains loyal. He will be highly valuable in the coming days.

COUNSELOR: Very well, Director.

[Audio ends.]

_Project Freelancer audio log 01090M-4, 1738. Interrogation of Agent Maine following assignment detailed in Case File 01.205//Level 2._

COUNSELOR: What was your relationship to Agent Connecticut, Agent Maine?

MAINE: (growls)

(Sound of a hologram powering on.)

SIGMA: Agent Connecticut was a dear friend of Agent Washington’s and, by extension, Agent Maine. They interacted regularly, up until a certain point. Dear Agent Connecticut began to withdraw herself; by the time of my assignment to Agent Maine, she was already spending significantly less time with them than prior to my implantation.

MAINE: (grunts)

COUNSELOR: Thank you, Sigma. That is very helpful information. Is that comparison based on Agent Maine’s memories?

SIGMA: Yes. To properly assist Agent Maine, I had to become familiar with their relationships and history.

MAINE: (growls)

COUNSELOR: I see.

(Fingers tapping on a screen.)

COUNSELOR: Did Agent Connecticut ever express any… rebellious, sentiments, during her interactions with Agent Maine and yourself?

MAINE: (starts to sign)

SIGMA: Not that I can recall. Whatever Agent Connecticut was doing, she kept it very close to her chest.

(The sound of signing hands stops.)

SIGMA: She was always a very inventive agent, a favourable quality. It truly is a shame that she has turned against us, is it not?

COUNSELOR: It is always a shame when someone turns against those that would try to help them, Sigma. However, given Agent Connecticut’s… _colourful_ , history, it is not necessarily a loss. I’m sure someone like you understands the danger of Insurrectionist sentiments, Agent Maine.

MAINE: (growls)

COUNSELOR: That is all we need from you today. You are dismissed.

(A chair scrapes across the floor and is then slammed back against the edge of the table.)

[Audio ends.]

_Project Freelancer audio log 0801F-2, 1061. Interrogation of Agent York following assignment detailed in Case File 01.205//Level 2._

YORK: I already know what you’re gonna ask me and the answer is no, CT didn’t say a word to me. I’d say you’d do better asking South, but, well…

(Something sparks.)

YORK: …pretty sure you’ve already seen her. Guess _that’s_ why North was only in here like, five minutes.

(YORK sits down.)

COUNSELOR: Hello, Agent York. You are, of course, correct; however, that would not have been my first question. What was your relationship with Agent Connecticut like, prior to her defection?

YORK: Amicable. She was fun, good company. Still, I didn’t spend that much time with her one-on-one, y’know? Mostly group hangouts and stuff. She was one of the team.

COUNSELOR: So, you did not notice a change in her behaviour?

YORK: Kinda? I don’t know. She always seemed like the dedicated kind. You know, one of the ones who do all their work on time, even if they have to skip lunch, stay up late, all that. Caught her on the training floor a few times, late at night, but it was always when I was looking for uh—

(YORK coughs.)

YORK: —someone _else_ , so it’s not like what she was doing was unusual. Though, I guess in hindsight, it’s kinda weird. Huh. I bet those late nights and skipping lunch weren’t all for her official work, right?

COUNSELOR: That does seem to be the case, yes.

YORK: Man. I never woulda thought… she had a mouth on her, sure, but this? The resistance? Didn’t think she was like that. Casts everything in a real different light.

(A chair creaks.)

YORK: But— look, I don’t know what to tell you. We weren’t that close. We were friendly, yeah, but if she told anyone what she was doing? It wasn’t me. And she was the best intelligence operative I’ve ever seen, coulda worked for ONI if she wanted. It’s no wonder you didn’t catch her before now.

(Silence.)

YORK: Though I guess ONI wouldn’t want an Innie.

COUNSELOR: Thank you, Agent York. That is all.

YORK: Really? I expected this to run longer.

COUNSELOR: As you said yourself, you and Agent Connecticut were not close. You have given us the information that you can, Agent York. You are dismissed.

(Chair legs hit the floor. YORK gets up.)

YORK: You sure?

COUNSELOR: Yes, Agent York. You may leave.

(YORK leaves.)

(COUNSELOR sighs.)

[Audio ends.]

_Project Freelancer audio log 01761C-1, 2210. Interrogation of Agent Carolina following assignment detailed in Case File 01.205//Level 2._

COUNSELOR: Agent Carolina. Please, take a seat.

(CAROLINA sits down. The chair makes minimal noise.)

COUNSELOR: I trust you understand what this debriefing will entail.

CAROLINA: You want to know why I didn’t notice what was happening with CT sooner. As team lead, I should have seen what happened out there coming.

COUNSELOR: We are much more interested in what you _did_ notice, Agent Carolina.

CAROLINA: She wasn’t always good at following orders. She thought she knew better; sometimes, she was right. Other times, she jeopardised both herself and her team. I thought what happened out there was just another example of that, until she didn’t come back.

COUNSELOR: I see. That is a concerning trend.

CAROLINA: In hindsight.

COUNSELOR: Did anything else catch your attention?

CAROLINA: There was… one time. We were talking, once, about our assignments; I commented on my disbelief that Insurrectionists could do the things they did. She… expressed sentiments that came dangerously close to sympathetic, towards the Insurrection. She backtracked quickly. I accepted it as a miscommunication.

COUNSELOR: Interesting.

CAROLINA: I suppose I should have known better.

COUNSELOR: Agent Connecticut came from a colony that was plagued by such Insurrectionist sympathies. It has… recently come to our attention, that she may have had relations in the Insurrection herself.

CAROLINA: She did mention the first point. I should have said something.

COUNSELOR: Perhaps. Nevertheless, the information you have given us is valuable, Carolina. This will help us to… _better construct_ , an image, of the events that lead us to this point.

CAROLINA: CT was a good agent. A hard worker. Towards the end, she seemed… tired. Off-kilter. I thought she was pushing herself with her work. That’s what she always said it was. I never would have thought…

COUNSELOR: Agent Connecticut proved herself to be an adept liar.

CAROLINA: I suppose so. Is that all you need?

COUNSELOR: It is. You are dismissed, agent.

(CAROLINA leaves as quietly as she arrived.)

[Audio ends.]

—

_Project Freelancer audio log 01761C-1, 1939. Interrogation of Agent Carolina following assignment detailed in Case File 01.212//Level 0._

DIRECTOR CHURCH: What happened in that bunker, Agent Carolina?

(A chair scrapes loudly across the floor.)

CAROLINA: Why don’t you ask Agent Texas? _She’s_ the one who— who struck her.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Agent Texas has nothing to explain on your behalf, _agent._

COUNSELOR: What the Director _means…_ is that we will be talking to Agent Texas in due time. You were the only two people in that bunker, Agent Carolina. We need to know what happened from _your_ point of view, as much as we do hers.

(CAROLINA stands. She doesn’t leave.)

CAROLINA: York shut off the power to the complex and we entered the bunker. We found Agent Connecticut and the Insurrectionist leader preparing to make their escape. CT attempted to talk her way out of it by lying to us and refused to come quietly. Agent Texas then shot to kill.

COUNSELOR: By which you mean—?

CAROLINA: She shot CT in the head, but it was a hologram. CT proceeded to use holograms against us multiple times during the ensuing fight.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: That is most interesting.

CAROLINA: Agent Texas finally struck CT with two tomahawks belonging to the leader. It was almost certainly a fatal blow.

COUNSELOR: Thus completing the objective, had they not escaped. What enabled their escape, Agent Carolina?

(CAROLINA audibly grits her teeth.)

CAROLINA: I questioned Texas’ decision. We were distracted.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: The mission objective did not require Agent Connecticut to be captured alive, Carolina. Do you understand that?

CAROLINA: I understand, sir.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Then why, may I ask, did you not take advantage of the injury that Agent Connecticut had sustained to secure your objective?

CAROLINA: I don’t know, sir.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: You don’t _know_?

CAROLINA: I have no excuse. I should have followed through on the objective.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Indeed. You should have. You cost us a highly valuable suit of armour and experimental unit today, as well as untold damage caused by the top-secret intelligence she likely left to her Insurrectionist associate.

CAROLINA: Yes, sir.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: There is no telling what your incompetence has set in motion. Be thankful that you are not being further penalised for your actions today. _Dismissed._

CAROLINA: Yes, sir.

(CAROLINA stalks out.)

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Counselor, we must—

[Audio ends.]

_Project Freelancer audio log 00100T-2, 1000. Interrogation of Agent Texas following assignment detailed in Case File 01.212//Level 0._

DIRECTOR CHURCH: What exactly happened in that bunker, Agent Texas? Agent Carolina has told us her version of events. I am very curious to see how it lines up with yours.

TEXAS: I breached the complex as instructed, blasted past the others who were sitting back with their thumbs up their asses, but the bunker was impenetrable because of some turrets they had set up. Wasn’t until York turned off the power we could get inside, but we did. 

COUNSELOR: Where you found Agent Connecticut and her… associate?

TEXAS: Yeah. Associate, contact, boyfriend, whatever, who knows. They were arguing when we got in. CT showed no willingness to come quietly; she wouldn’t back down. So, I did what I had to do to secure the objective. We would have her armour if Carolina didn’t get _weird._

COUNSELOR: Agent Carolina said that she… questioned, your actions. Would you say that description is correct?

TEXAS: (snorts) She physically prevented me from following our target and caused us to lose an entire suit of armour. ‘Questioned’ is underselling it _just_ a bit.

(A chair creaks.)

TEXAS: She was getting in my way during the fight, too. Kept putting herself between me and CT.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: She was not prepared to do what had to be done.

TEXAS: Guess not.

COUNSELOR: Did anything else about the encounter with Agent Connecticut strike you as… unusual?

(Silence.)

TEXAS: CT was spinning lies. Trying to talk her way out of it. She said some weird stuff but… nothing important. Ramblings of someone backed into a corner they couldn’t get out of. That’s all.

COUNSELOR: What exactly did Agent Connecticut s—

DIRECTOR CHURCH: That will be all, Agent Texas. Your perspective on the situation is very much appreciated.

(Boots hit the floor. A chair pushes out.)

(TEXAS leaves.)

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Examine her memories closely, when she returns for her standard debriefings, but we must be careful about what we ask her directly, Counselor.

COUNSELOR: Of course, Director.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: I want to know everything Connecticut said to her and the possible ramifications. If needs must, purge all memories of what happened in that bunker.

COUNSELOR: Of course, Director.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: We must cut the head off this beast before it can cause any more damage that it already has. Do you understand, Counselor?

COUNSELOR: I understand, Director.

DIRECTOR CHURCH: Good. Now stop that damn recording.

[Audio ends.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! The last chapter, which I suppose is more of an epilogue. This has been my second long fic for Red vs. Blue and the first one I actually bothered to write out entirely in advance so I could make sure I kept everything straight, because man, this was... quite the undertaking. Making PFL into something coherent required a lot of work but I wanted to give Connie the sort of in-depth story she deserved, so here we are.
> 
> (Yes, giving her a better story included making her death even meaner, shhh.)
> 
> Thank you to anyone who's read this far. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


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